I Will Remember You
by Leraiv Snape
Summary: HG/SS. Snape refuses to make the Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa Malfoy, and the world suffers consequences none could have guessed at. An alternate view on what made him take that Vow. Warning: Character Death.
1. Present

Disclaimer: All characters in this piece belong to JKR and Warner Bros, no copyright infringement intended. The germ of this story, however, must doff its hat to Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt and their show, _Angel_.

A/N: This is another story that put down roots in my brain years ago - shortly after HBP was published. For those familiar with _Angel_, this piece loosely corresponds to some of the ideas put out in the 8th episode of the 1st season, which is where the fic got its name: "I Will Remember You". It is under the romance and alternate universe labels because there isn't one that really matches, so a warning for those who like happy endings: this fic is a bittersweet love story, heavier on the bitter than the sweet. It is four chapters long, and its a completed story, so I will be posting once a week for the next month. Happy reading!

Present

Dawn's gilded edges slid rose-and-orange over the bars of the cell, bathing the stone with a kiss of gold, the granite eagerly soaking up the rays, warming to chase away night's chill. The day would be hot, flowers competing with their raucous colours for the attentions of bees and butterflies, each enticing the pollen spreaders with their barrage of scents and promises of nectar. The cycle of life continued unabated, unconcerned by the bloodshed that had stained so much earth and brought so many tears. Uncaring of the lives that would cease today, the last of a line executed one by one.

The man huddled in a corner, farthest from the creeping line of sunlight rippling across the grimy floor. His black robes deepened the shadows in which he had hid himself as he waited. The bare rise and fall of his chest was the only thing that confirmed his existence amongst the living. The cold, sculptural face, the hair curving in matted lines of filth past his jaw, the stillness of his limbs were more reminiscent of a disturbing art piece than a live being.

Not that he would be for very much longer.

The door rattled, a large skeleton key inserted to unlock and simultaneously dismantle the wards surrounding his cell. The man did not stir. He was one of the two highest-security prisoners in the fortress-prison, but his guards had found him docile, compliant, three-quarters dead already. The formidable mind seemed to have surrendered to the inevitable, and with it, all will to exercise a once-indomitable power.

'Snape?' the Death Eater grunted, entering. ''is Lordship says yer t'swing today. Last ones finished and we're rid o' the lot o' yer.'

For the first time, Severus Snape met the eyes of his captors with something like emotion flickering to life in them. _Last ones._ Had they already killed her? The last of the Golden Trio, the only one to survive the battle – to be condemned instantly to the inside of a prison cell. Would her spitted head greet him as he strode to his hanging, that wonderful hair falling in frizzy layers around a bloodied neck, impatient brown eyes dulled with death?

He unfolded himself rapidly. Death's embrace suddenly seemed welcome indeed. For years he had expected it, only to find over the past long months that he desperately wished to keep his life, to see it continue, to allow it to grow and include others – a certain Gryffindor, to start, and, maybe one day, a son or a daughter to grace Hogwarts' halls in their turn...

The bloody end of their conflict had also aborted such dreams. They had backed the wrong horse. Dumbledore's frailty had combined with an unexpectedly ruthless streak in Draco Malfoy to bring about his too-early demise, and the pieces of the Dark Lord's soul remained scattered and well-guarded. Potter's final stand in Ottery St. Catch-pole had been brave, self-sacrificing, noble, utterly Gryffindor and completely useless.

It had also been the end of the war. Unable to destroy his mortal enemy, Potter and Weasley had fallen in the same breath. The next ten minutes had seen the devastation of most of the army, Voldemort's twirling wand invincible now that the Bane-of-His-Existence had died.

The guard's wand was trained on him, and Snape wanted to laugh in the man's face. Were they so deluded as to think that he – he who had walked both sides of the line and witnessed the horrors perpetrated in the names of both Light and Dark – would fight them now? He could not live in a world that Voldemort controlled. He had known that since his nineteenth year of life.

The cell door swung closed on noiseless hinges and the young Death Eater's walk echoed heavily from the dark walls. He kept glancing nervously at the prisoner who walked such sinuous silence next to him. No wonder the man had been given a space of his own at the very top level of Azkaban. Deprived of his wand, food, a shower and any changes of clothing, he still radiated power and self-control to a degree that most could only envy.

Snape was well aware of the regard as they traversed the halls to the lower corridors of the tower. He glanced at the death-grip the man had on his wand. It would be too easy to overpower him, to strip the wand, keys and robes, to alter his appearance and leave—

--and go where? With whom? The world beyond the veil had claimed the few he loved and the many he'd fought for. Minerva McGonagall. Neville Longbottom. All the Weasleys. Albus Dumbledore. Harry Potter. Lily Potter. Hermione Granger.

At not-quite-forty years old, Severus Snape was ready to add himself to the horrendous mortality rate the war had commanded.

"Ah, there you are." Walden Macnair rose from his seat as the prison's official, smirking at his former comrade, the guard totally ignored. "Our Lord wanted you to see this." He beckoned to the large window that overlooked the bridge to the mainland and the courtyard below. "Come, Severus." Snape moved forward slowly, dreading what he might see. His former master was adept at forcing others to drain the cup of sorrow and pain to its dregs, wrangling misery from those who truly thought there could be no more.

He tensed at what he saw. The gallows had been constructed there in the courtyard, still bathed in the triangular shadow of the great bastion. Hanging. Voldemort's final statement.

'_Those of you who believed in Muggle rights may die by Muggle means_,' he had said a week ago, when the hangings had begun.

A body was being unloaded now, the rope cut down. Snape strained to see, but could not make out the features. Soon, it would be his lifeless shell flopping so gracelessly into the cart being pulled by Argus Filch – the Squib allowed to keep his life for his betrayal of Dumbledore and Hogwarts...

'No,' he whispered, and his long fingers were pressing against the glass. The pale form being pulled up the rough steps to the noose had long, brown hair that whipped in the morning wind. Defiance still lined her body, the tilt of her chin clear even from this distance. He watched her spit at the hangman, and the huge man backhanded her, causing her stumble as the Death Eaters watching jeered, relishing the savage entertainment.

'The master said you always had too much attachment to...what were his exact words? "Those of filthy blood."' The words rolled from Macnair's tongue as if he were smacking his lips around them, enjoying the flavour. 'Another of your treasures come to ruin, eh, Severus?'

The pale ex-professor barely heard the gloating words, his nails scraping the window as a thick rope was shoved down over Hermione's head, weighing her hair to flutter helplessly in the wind like a broken-winged bird. Her manacled hands lifted as she tried to push the hemp away, earning her another slap and more uproarious laughter from the crowd.

'Spirited, isn't she?' Macnair sneered. 'Must have been a perk in bed.'

These words finally had the effect the warden was looking for. A frustrated roar surged through the dark man, and his bound hands fisted, swinging upwards to make contact with Macnair's head. The Death Eater stumbled backwards, a trickle of blood blossoming from his temple to stream down his face.

'_Stupefy!'_ cried the young guard, terror in every inch of his face as Snape ducked half-successfully, the curse catching his thigh and sending a wave of numbness through his legs. He crashed to the floor, twisting his shoulders to turn the fall into a roll – only to meet Macnair's booted foot with his mid-section.

Hands jerked him upright even as he curled in on himself, and he was gazing into Macnair's anger-reddened features. 'Always so quick to fury, Severus. Over what? A Mudblood toy? Was she worth turning traitor? Was that Evans bitch? You could have had either – or both – if you'd stayed the course.'

'What I have fought for is something you cannot understand,' Snape breathed laboriously, his ribs aching from the steel-toed shoe.

'I certainly hope not. You'll die for it.'

'I've been prepared to die for twenty years, Walden,' he said with a cold smile. 'Forgive me if the thought does not send me into weeping hysterics now.' He craned his neck, watching through the window, praying that of the millions of theories that accompanied the Afterlife, at least those regarding the closeness of loved ones would prove to be true...

The executioner was at his lever. The trapdoor would drop— Snape closed his eyes. He could not save her. He could only join her.

'_She _is dying for it. Now. Watch,' Macnair's icy voice ordered, and Snape found his eyelids spelled open, his face pressed against the window, unable to keep himself from watching as they immobilized Hermione to stop her struggling, as a black-gloved hand reached for the control—

--the burly man yanked the lever, the door collapsed—

--a shudder travelled through the body he knew so well, limbs jerking in a final spasm—

--and she was still, swinging faintly as the crowd erupted in cheers.

'Your turn, Severus,' Macnair said with a snigger, turning away. Three wands dug into the wizard's ribs, but the black eyes that swept over the room were nearly as dull as those belonging to the murdered witch below. He said nothing as he marched out the door, down another two flights of stairs and into the already-warm early-morning air.

'The last of our criminals, the traitor Snape, who spent twenty years spying on our noble lord and selling his secrets to the meddlesome Mudblood-lover, Albus Dumbledore!' The announcer stepped back, basking in the boos and hissing coming from the audience as Snape ascended to the platform.

He made no moves as the last rope, the only one uncut, was secured about his throat, constricting his breathing and making it rasp in his ears.

A flash of blond penetrated his cocoon of pain, and he focussed on the pale-gold head of Draco Malfoy, who stood, cool and superior, to the left of the crowd, surrounded by his lackeys wearing dark blue lined with silver to show allegiance to their newly-named regent.

Who had known the boy would prove so bloodthirsty? Worse than Lucius by far. The death of Albus Dumbledore had vaulted him to the high seat his father and Head of House had once occupied.

_Your sons will grow twisted, their knees bent to a tyrant, and on the day that one of them dies at his hand, you will know what you have embraced. You will understand how much it cost your father to watch you surpass his monstrous deeds. And it will be too late._

_The Devil may have the lot of them_, Snape thought, without a shred of mercy. It would not take long for the wizarding folk who had bowed to Voldemort's rule to learn what destruction they had brought upon themselves. And by the time they knew, they would be too far gone to change course.

'Final words?' the announcer asked, swaggering up to him with a nasty smile.

Snape shook his head. The smirk widened, and the man nodded to the executioner. Out of the corner of his eye, Snape could see the hand reaching, saw the fingers wrap around the lever, saw the muscles in the bare arms flex—

--his feet barely felt the ground vanish beneath him—

--his neck seared for the briefest moment—

--blackness engulfed him, a blessed stillness suffusing him as he hurtled into a different world.

**********

Indeterminate darkness. Un-clocked time. Weightless and spaceless, Snape's consciousness drifted. Relief gave way to curiosity, curiosity to boredom, boredom to impatience and, finally, disappointment.

Finally, the dreadful question took shape. _Is this all? Is there no more?_

Snape had expected neither the white wisps of light-soaked clouds supporting angels, nor the smoke-fogged, flame-saturated underworld from so many mythologies. Death was bound to be mysterious – a life bounded by physical properties could not possibly comprehend an existence without them, no matter how many metaphors humanity employed.

But so far, all he knew was that he, Severus Tobias Snape, continued. Without knowledge of others, without connection to place or time...

He focussed his increasingly random and lonely thoughts, wondering if this version life, like the many years before it, required will and work to affect a change in his not-quite-environment.

Tumbling curls. A warm smile on the wickedly intelligent mouth. Impassioned amber eyes. A feeling of homecoming, a desire _to_ come home, to have such a concrete place in his deliberately fluid existence. The unshakable faith, the undeniable assertion..._ 'Of course I love you...'_

The woman solidified in his mind and her name seemed to vibrate through him. _Hermione?_ He felt himself moving – though how he would describe such movement in a place lacking scenery or even wind was beyond him. He only knew that his centred mind had caused him to shift – that where he was now was not where he had been...

Lines sketched themselves before his eyes, a simple black-and-white drawing growing complicated as shades of grey clouded corners, space becoming three-dimensional, and then drab colour leeched into the composition, growing slightly brighter.

The world that finally crystallized around him shocked him. It was the playground from his childhood, ill-used and ill-kept, paint peeling from the seesaw and weeds creeping through the sandbox. He glanced around, surprised to find himself suddenly seeming so corporeal and in such a real place. What was death, that he found himself here? And why had it produced this desolate landscape instead of the Gryffindor he longed to meet?

Even as he wondered, the long-forgotten site of his youth began to melt, shifting, becoming the stones of a castle he knew too well, the Great Hall forming around him, Sorting Hat and stool dominating the front. It was completely empty of other people, but that did not overly worry him. He took a hesitant step towards the artefact, only to see it swirl into the black curtains wrapping his bed in Slytherin's dungeon, the long, teen-scarred House tables becoming the rich mahogany of his personal chambers.

Here, he did no more than sweep the space with his eyes. He had lived in these quarters for more than a decade and a half, and yet he felt little connection to them in this world, wherever he was. He had never particularly cared for them in life—

--the scene seethed again. Now, the lined bookshelves of Albus Dumbledore's private library, tucked behind his public office, took form, and Snape was moving as the small space settled, a peculiar contentment that he had never felt in life bathing him. _This_ was the right place – though he didn't know how he knew what constituted a "right place" in this strange realm.

His fingers ran along the spines of the books curiously, skimming titles, wondering if, perhaps, this constituted a kind of reward or paradise – regrettably empty of certain people, but brimming with the chance to continue learning. He had selected a title when he felt the arrival of another presence behind him. He knew without turning that it was not the woman he wanted.

'Severus Snape.'

He froze. The voice was warm, full-bodied, an adult woman's voice deepened with maturity. A voice he had not heard for many years. But one he knew, nevertheless.

'Mrs. Potter,' he said stiffly as he twisted to face his childhood friend and the obsession of his teen years. She was still beautiful, looking as untouched as the day they had closed her coffin – pale skin, bright green, inquisitive eyes, tumbling corkscrew curls of rich red. Her cheeks were flushed with colour as they had been in life, and a wide smile split her lips as he turned, genuine delight glittering in her eyes.

He could not help the stab of irony that pierced his disappointment. There was a time, not so many years ago, that he had dreamed of meeting Lily upon his death. But instead of the satisfaction he had imagined, only a cool tinge of cynical curiosity coloured the moment. Once again, he was facing the second-best. Was he to be forever denied that which he most desired?

'You love her very much, don't you?' she asked, her smile of welcome fading into one of bittersweet sadness.

Such a question should have angered him – the living Snape would have answered the query with a tight-lipped glare. But here it aroused almost no emotion, other than astonishment that the red-head who had walked out of his life so many years ago would care.

'Yes,' he heard himself answer simply.

Lily looked directly into his face and her expression was much older than the twenty-one-year-old woman who had been laid rest in the ground. 'Come. There is something you must see. Something of great importance.'

For a long moment, he merely stared, holding the green eyes that had ceased to plague him years ago. 'What?'

'I will show you.'

'I would rather look before I leap this time,' he countered coolly. 'I spent my entire life paying for a mistake made as a child.'

'What you need to see is the bridge over the river. You can look all you want before crossing.' He cocked an eyebrow, unmoving, daring her to continue. 'Your position is...singular. Unique. Two men made you the fulcrum of a war. Your actions had a greater significance than most.'

'And? Past tense, Mrs. Potter,' he replied, unable to keep some relief from his voice. It had ended badly, but at least it was over. 'My life has run its course. I made my choices. They were the wrong ones.' His mild satisfaction faded, eyes bleak with memory. 'The whole of my life was a waste.'

'It doesn't have to be. You needn't make them twice, Severus,' she told him gently. He favoured her with a look of blank incomprehension.

'Come,' she bade him again.

'All you have spun me are more riddles. Speak plainly.'

'Plainly? As you will. You can choose a different path. Purchase a future for the world you have left.'

Snape studied the shade of a woman he had once loved in vain. This wasn't making sense. Done was done. Time moved on for mortals, a world he no was no longer linked to. 'How?'

'Return. The land of the living can yet use you.' She returned the dark gaze steadily. 'Turn the clock backwards. Make a new decision.'

'Which one?'

'That is what I have to show you. Your choice, and that which accompanied it, and the decades that will spin ahead under Voldemort's rule. Everything that you can change. All it takes is your own will.'

The former teacher and spy considered it, shook his phantom head. 'To what end? I told you – it's over. And I will not lie to tell you I am sorry to be rid of the world and its burdens.' He turned his back, dismissing her.

'And her, Severus? What of Hermione Granger?'

He whipped back around faster than she expected, eyes burning charcoal. 'What about her?'

'Her life, along with hundreds of thousands of others, hangs in the balance.'

'I see.' Oppressive silence, followed by, 'Any other critical details you care to drop?'

'Severus-'

'My life – as you so correctly pointed out – has been one of manipulation by two of the most brilliant wizards in the past five centuries. I have paid the ultimate price for it – several times over.' His voice dropped to a deadly whisper. 'I will ask you one more time. Anything else?'

A breath, a sigh. Purely for effect, he noticed. Breathing was no longer required. 'No.' The green eyes flashed as she met his furious gaze again. 'But I will make you a promise.' Snape waited, cold features growing no warmer. He had been the victim of many promises – some of them had been made by this very woman in their youth. 'I guarantee that should you choose to return, she will survive.'

Decisiveness hardened in the black. 'Then return me.'

'Payment must be made.'

'Naturally,' he snorted. 'Even in death, nothing can come for free.' His eyes darkened, and Lily could tell that he was looking past her, into a world that she could not see. 'It doesn't matter.' He re-focused on her, and the heat in his expression made her swallow. 'Whatever price you demand, I will pay it. In full and in blood, if I must.'

Wordlessly, she pulled a slender book from the shelf without ever breaking eye contact, handing it to him. Like his skin, the tome was shadow, pages made of wispy spirit-paper, the leather-bound cover merging with his hands.

'Your gateway to the past you must change. Open it.'

There was no hesitation as he flipped the cover aside. Otherworldly wind ruffled the pages, blowing them over as Lily and the office began to fade around him.

'You will not accompany me?' he asked.

'No. This is a journey you must undertake alone, one that your heart must understand. Watch, and learn. Remember...' the physical imprint had vanished completely, leaving her voice to land in his ears as if stretched over a great distance, 'wishes come true. Not free.'

And she was completely gone, the book and the office disappearing with her, leaving him in the strangely blank space he had inhabited before...

Snape regarded the new space suddenly unfolding before his eyes curiously. It was clearly a Muggle suburban development on a mid-summer's night. The leaves on the hedges were poking up furtively, as if wondering how far they could creep before the clippers came back out to tame them. Flowers drifted to and fro on delicate stems with the passing of cars, the friendly nosiness of dogs and the occasional breeze that meandered through.

The Potions master noticed that he had retained the physical shape granted to him in the mock-up of Dumbledore's library – semi-solid and in full colour, but oddly translucent. The not-quite-ghost drifted over the emerald lawns, listening to the quiet ticking of sprinkler systems and wondering what could have brought him here, to the kind of place that had been too expensive for his parents, too Muggle for his comrades...a foreign world he had only ever entered on raids...

His sight caught on a brass number pinned neatly to the brick next to an off-white door, and he felt himself pulled closer. Trusting that this was in keeping with what Lily had ordered him to learn, he allowed himself to waft towards it.

He went through the flimsy door and glided silently up the stairs, the voices from the kitchen rising and falling indistinctly, like a radio with bad reception. Across a landing. A room mostly-shut, a splash of gold illuminating the otherwise dark hallway. The light seemed almost too bright to be natural, as if it were summoning him, drawing him onwards, and he let himself follow the instinct.

Flowing out of the darkness, into the light...stopping. The breath he didn't have suddenly aching in his chest as he understood why he had arrived _here_.

Sprawled out before him lay Hermione Granger, smooth, tanned legs wrapped in a pair of short shorts that she would never have worn in public, slender back partially bared by a thin spaghetti-strap. Yearning seized him, and he stared at her greedily, allowing his desire to reign in death as it had never been permitted to in life. This woman who he had known too well, and not well enough, whose mouth, face and neck he had memorized with the promise of learning the rest of the body later, at their leisure...

Then she had preceded him in death. Yet she was splayed here, heart beating, the rise and fall of her sun-browned back betraying her breathing, very much alive.

_When_ was he? The 'where' was obvious, but he needed a time frame...

Her left hand idly petted her familiar, Crookshanks, as she irritably tapped her quill against a half-filled parchment, spraying ink-drops everywhere.

'I don't _know, _Crooks,' she grumbled to the half-Kneazle. 'I don't know what he wants. Does he mean that we should speculate or do independent research? The answer is definitely _not _in the book.' Slamming shut the apparently useless tome, the young woman sat up abruptly, staring moodily at the unfinished essay. 'Impossible man! Properties of Faceted Gemstones in the Process of Distillation! Borage says yes, Clawson says no, Liberati insists that it only works when pure moonlight or sunlight are involved. Not _all _of us have access to the library in Alexandria whenever we want!'

_Properties of Faceted Gemstones..._Date and time clicked in his consciousness as he glanced towards the clock with glowing numbers and then found the calendar, the days dutifully crossed off in her countdown to Hogwarts. 11:46 pm, the first of August. Three years ago. He knew what night this was. He dimly recalled assigning the essay that she was fretting over so. He definitely remembered her many sheets of parchment on the subject – the only one of her peers to have remotely touched on the point he had wanted them to make.

But in a few minutes, he had a shrewd suspicion that tonight's frantic work would be interrupted.

His own memory of this event was so vivid he could still recount every detail. It was the night that he had signed his own death warrant, the evening he had brought the executioner's sword to lie over his neck, beginning the painful, dangerous wait that would last almost three years before it came slicing through.

_Knocking at the door. Furtive at first, then growing louder, desperation almost blaring as the banging grew heavier, the whispers from the other side more heated. Snape entered the shabby living room of his parents' home, hurrying to turn to the knob._

'_Narcissa!' he said, face softening. 'What a pleasant surprise!'_

'_Severus. May I speak to you? It's urgent.'_

'_But of course.'_

_Bellatrix's hostility washed over him, at odds with Narcissa's desperation, Pettigrew's whinging and his own, silent decision, made within seconds of the pair's arrival._

_The petty assertions of his false loyalties – all true – from the eldest daughter of Orion Black...Narcissa's weeping...and then the fatal words:_

'_Severus...will you swear it? Will you make the Unbreakable Vow?'_

_Snape re-adjusted surreptitiously, wand dropping from the sheath strapped to his forearm into the cupped palm of his hands, uncertain how the unstable woman would react in her current condition._

'_No, Narcissa.' The voice he used was so gentle as to be completely foreign to his students. 'That I cannot do.' The Dark Lord had told him of Draco's pending job, the expectation that Narcissa would beg for Snape's help. He had made his decision then – he would refuse her. He had to refuse her. He could not blithely promise to end the life of Albus Dumbledore._

_Almost in time with his soft denial, a feral smile creased Bellatrix's Azkaban-ravaged features. The snarl of victory as her wand flashed upwards told him that the whole situation was a test – driven by a genuinely distraught Narcissa, but a test nevertheless._

_One he had failed._

He had felled Bellatrix, but not until after she had laid his body open in over a dozen places. The dusty floor of Spinner's End had been coated in blood, vomit and mucus. Blinded by the crimson pouring from his own forehead, he had dropped to his knees to find Narcissa Malfoy's weak but constant pulse, and then groped for his bookshelf.

Shoved between the covers of an ancient school text was a golden Galleon. His slick fingers scrambled over it, streaking the gleaming coin with generous swaths of blood. He had hesitated, uncertain.

It was a coin belonging to the DA, the group of rebels that had christened themselves Dumbledore's Army in open mockery of the Ministry and their Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. It was the first of Harry Potter's actions that Severus Snape had whole-heartedly approved of, and he had deliberately acquired one of the coins, duplicated it for himself and Minerva, and slipped it back to its owner. It had come in handy in protecting the illegal association, until Draco had defied him.

But if he activated it now, it would burn, and potentially bring a few puzzled students – those capable of Apparition, anyway, to this unsafe neighbourhood, perhaps walking into a Death Eater trap...

_Better death_, the shade remembered thinking, _than exposing one of them in such a way. _It would have been so easy to die that night. So simple to allow himself not to witness all that he had, not to suffer what he had borne. All he'd had to do was close his eyes and let his mind drift away as his body dripped the last of his life onto the mouldy rug.

But Harry Potter still had to defeat the Dark Lord. Until the maniac lay in his grave, Snape could not put down his wand. Stiffening hands fumbling, he had managed to change the coin's message.

_SOS. Spinners End. Call Albus._

11:48. Crookshanks began to mewl, re-focussing shade-Snape's attention on the present – whatever that meant – as the familiar began pawing at Hermione's neatly-hung school robes in the open closet. The wild curls lifted, brown eyes creasing in puzzlement.

'What, Crooks?' She did not rise from her position on the floor, and the half-Kneazle's claws came out, hooking into the threads. She was on her feet in a flash, quill throwing ink halfway across the floor as she dashed to stop him. 'Stop it! You know how easily you shred these!' She snatched him up, glaring expectantly, but there was no apology on the squashed face. Instead, he extended a long leg, paw outstretched. Her anger turned to bafflement as he insistently turned his yellow eyes on the pocket.

'What? These've all been washed, so you can't possibly sense anything on them,' she huffed as she set him down, plunging her hand into the deep pockets experimentally. The first yielded nothing but a scrap of red lint. She dangled it in front of the feline's nose.

'See? _Nothing _there.' But Crookshanks' gaze remained resolutely fixed, and Snape watched the girl give in to her familiar's instincts and go rifling through the other pocket.

He knew the instant she touched the coin. Bewilderment gave way to immediate alarm, and she snatched her hand out of the robes, bringing the Galleon up to her face and squinting to make out the summons there.

'SOS. Spinner's End. Call Albus?' She repeated the message to herself, front teeth worrying her lower lip. 'What is Spinner's End?' she wondered aloud. Amber eyes cut automatically to the piles of books stacked haphazardly on every flat surface (including the bed) before dismissing research as too time-costly.

'Professor Dumbledore...' she whirled on the half-Kneazle now perched smugly on the armchair. 'Crooks – can you get to Fawkes?'

Snape's attention snapped back to the girl, his idle perusal of his memories and her things forgotten. Fawkes. He recalled that she had seemed to have a peculiar...connection with the eternal bird. Their time had been so short that he had never asked her – writing it off as yet another side effect of being hit with Harry Potter's limelight. Perhaps Potter had much less to do with it than he had assumed.

'Tell Fawkes that Professor Dumbledore is needed for this Spinner's End. Urgently.'

Crookshanks tilted his head and closed his brilliant yellow eyes, looking for all the world as if he were going to sleep where he sat. Hermione's fingers clenched and released spasmodically around the coin in her fist as she watched him, her glance never wavering.

The slotted eyes snapped open at the same time that fire flared in the middle of the room, and Hermione scrambled backwards with a shriek of surprise, her wand Summoned wordlessly to fly across the room and slap against her palm.

By the time the orange flame vanished to reveal the splendidly-clad Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the young woman was crouched behind her dresser, three layers of shields between her and the powerful wizard, and a combination ward on the door to prevent him from getting to the Muggles just one floor down.

Her speed, effectiveness and thoroughness impressed the shade now lingering in the corners of the room. He had not doubted the Gryffindor's brilliance since she had solved his riddle guarding the Philosopher's Stone in her first year, but he had forgotten, in the desperate weeks since their loss, how fast she had become when duelling. As a younger student, it had always been one of her weaker suits.

But this was after fifth-year, after the DA, after the fight in the Department of Mysteries that had nearly resulted in her death. Apparently she was determined not to be so unprepared again.

Not that it would save her, in the end.

Brushing faint traces of ash from a resplendent forest-green brocade, Dumbledore merely gave her an amused look. 'Your reflexes are commendable, my dear. As is your knowledge of defensive charms. However, I feel obliged to point out that, were I a Death Eater, I would not arrive in so, er, _flashy _a manner.'

'Sorry, sir,' she panted, and rose slowly, dismantling the charms shimmering around her. Fawkes had perched on the back of the chair where Crookshanks was resting and Snape saw Hermione wince as she watched the wickedly curved talons sink into the upholstery.

'Understandable. And, as I said, commendable.' The twinkle had vanished, and he stepped towards her quickly, lowering his voice. 'Miss Granger, it is vital that I understand this message completely. How is it that you know about Spinner's End? And what happened there that requires immediate attention?'

In reply, Hermione's upturned palm produced her sweat-polished DA Galleon. The elderly wizard peered at his through his half-moon spectacles, thin lips moving as he read the inscription.

'This was the way that Dumbledore's Army communicated.' It wasn't a question.

'Yes, Professor.'

'Then how...?' The old man shook his head, tried to project a version of his confident smile at her, and failed. 'Thank you. Forgive me for not staying long enough to introduce myself to your parents, but this is an emergency.'

'Of course, sir.' Fawkes' large wings awkwardly filled the room for a moment as he launched from his resting place, shredding the top of the pillow. Dumbledore's veined hands clasped around the sweeping golden tail and they vanished in the blaze that had brought them.

Snape watched Hermione stare at the centre of her room for a long time, eyes glazed in thought. Crookshanks retained his vigilant posture in the chair, gaze darting from surface to surface, tension rippling in the muscles under his fur.

The phantom once again drifted closer to the young woman who had managed to scale the sheer walls closing off the inner sanctum of his heart, grief rising to match his craving to feel the heat of her body under his hands. The woman that had hung in Azkaban's courtyard had been a shadow of the healthy almost-seventeen-year-old before him. Pale, haggard and unkempt, only the spirit had remained the same. The curious, passionate eyes had not changed in captivity or with the knowledge of her imminent execution.

Impotent fury filled Snape as he watched her slowly resume her studies, feather now tapping her teeth at long intervals when she would stare out the window, Potions essays eclipsed from her mind. That this girl, this vibrant, achingly innocent girl, would be dead before she lived another three full years was suddenly too much to know. She had so much _life _left, her joy in living a tangible feeling as she tackled her obligations, as she buried her hands in her familiar's fur, when her mouth split open in laughter.

She was undeniably old before her time. The swiftness of her reaction to the Headmaster's arrival left no doubt that she was an active soldier, fighting a war. But she remained un-jaded, the core of her being unsullied by the hideousness of the Death Eaters and the pettiness of her classmates.

Despair swamped him as it had not done when he had witnessed her hanging, the full remembrance of who had been sacrificed that crisp morning agonizing him.

_If I could spare you...you, who _deserve_ to live, to fight for the dreams you can make..._ War was such a waste. And it always claimed the best as its prizes. Frank and Alice Longbottom. The Prewett brothers. Lily Potter. Hermione Granger.

The minutes ticked past. The young woman rose again, hands twisting about the quill as she discarded her attempts at study and paced the length of her room, not even glancing at the late hour betrayed by the clock. Sleep was clearly not on her mind.

Light and warmth burst in the small room again, and this time the object of his mourning neither cried out nor raised her wand. She merely scrambled backwards as the Headmaster solidified once more, the black-and-white-clad body of the Potions master of Hogwarts draped over his arms.

'Professor Snape?' she gasped, and then jerked her wand at her bed, scattering the books there haphazardly across the floor, her reverence for the library's possessions abruptly deposed by his wretched appearance.

'Thank you, Miss Granger,' Dumbledore breathed heavily, gently placing his burden on the mattress. 'Most of the blood is dried, so it shouldn't get too dirty.' A hand passed over weary eyes. The digital clock now read 12:04 in glaring red.

'I deeply apologize for my continued intrusion on your privacy and time, but I must beg of you to allow Severus to stay here overnight.'

A hesitant nod signalled her assent as a quiet '_Tergeo,' _began siphoning away the remaining blood. 'Will he be safe here? Will my parents be safe with him here?'

_Good girl_, the shade approved. She showed no surprise at the nature of the professor's irregular request, but had skipped straight to the two most critical questions.

'Your house is warded, Miss Granger, by a layer of enchantments specifically designed to keep the Death Eaters away. Extra security will be here within fifteen minutes. Precisely because it is a most unlikely place for Severus to hide, I firmly believe they will not come here. However,' he dug in his robe and produced a worn china teacup, the inside permanently stained a light brown from holding tea over decades, 'it does not do to take any risks. This is a Portkey, tied to my office. If you are disturbed, make sure both of your parents are touching it, then grab hold of Professor Snape and go with them. The Portkey will activate once all three members of your family are touching it, so make sure you've got a grip on Severus before you go.'

'Understood.' She carefully took the delicate item and balanced it in one of the miniscule free areas of her desk. 'We have nothing beyond basic first aid in the house,' she warned the Headmaster, returning to her task and continuing to clean him.

'Despite how bad it looks, he was remarkably lucky. The only serious damage was two cracked ribs, and I mended those. There were other, smaller wounds that I have closed – but if they can be run down with disinfectant or spells, I would appreciate it. He really shouldn't need anything much beyond sleep.'

'And Blood-Replenishing Potion,' she returned. 'Which St. Mungo's gave me to recover from the Department of Mysteries disaster.'

'If you have any to spare, it would be a great help,' Dumbledore admitted ruefully. Then the x-ray gaze landed on her sternly. 'To _spare_, Miss Granger. Not to sacrifice. I do not want your health imperilled.'

'I have completely recovered, sir,' she assured him. _At least physically,_ Snape thought from where he hung, once again hovering near the closet so that he could see the expressions on both faces. Nothing could restore the broken innocence of her childhood. Her instant reaction to the professor's arrival both times had proven that.

'I am indebted to you, my dear. This is an occurrence I have no wish to explain – not to the staff at St. Mungo's or at Hogwarts.'

'Why, sir?' she asked boldly. His moustache twitched upwards as he regarded her, but the blue eyes were singularly serious.

'You know what Professor Snape does for the Order?'

'He's a spy,' she answered immediately.

'Yes. Unfortunately, I believe tonight's events have put that station in the past tense. He _was_ a spy. When I arrived in his house tonight, Bellatrix Lestrange's body was on the floor and her youngest sister, Narcissa Malfoy, was unconscious in an armchair. Before dawn, Voldemort will come looking for him. Despite littering the world with disinformation, the _Prophet _and its reporters observe wizarding Britain entirely too well to keep his condition and whereabouts a secret in any institution. It is imperative that he remain out of sight until he has recovered.'

'He is welcome here, sir,' she said quietly, and Snape almost felt the heart he knew he no longer had surging into his throat. She did not wince, sigh, roll her eyes or make excuses. She did not demand a reason for being asked to bear such a burden – and burden it would be. Standing half-naked at midnight in front of the most powerful wizard in Britain, Hermione Granger suddenly exuded the quiet dignity unique to adulthood that had always been lacking from her studious demeanour.

'Thank you,' Dumbledore replied, his voice equally soft. Suddenly, he extended his hand. A flicker of amusement shot through Snape as he watched the young woman gaze at it in awe, then match the age-marked hand with her smooth one, squeezing. 'I know he will be in good hands, Hermione.'

For the third time, the room filled with light, heat rolling in a wave to bounce off the walls as Fawkes and his master vanished from the house.

Snape watched Hermione gingerly begin to strip his torso, fascinated by the delicate, but clinical, way in which she removed his black, button-down shirt, and then used her wand to slice through the white undershirt beneath, baring his chest. Small fingers prodded sensitively at his plainly-visible ribs as she ran her wand down his chest, drawing the slashes of scarlet from his scar-laced skin.

It was a miracle she'd ever looked at him again, the shade thought critically. He had always known his physical appearance left much to be desired. Looking at himself from the outside, self-disgust broiled in him. His flesh was almost plaster-white, the criss-crossing lines of puffy scar tissue darting across it in tracks, disfiguring him. He was far too thin, the blue of his veins standing out like vivid rivers on his lower arms.

'It seems that Headmaster Dumbledore _did_ do all the basic healing on you, Professor,' she was addressing him in a quiet voice. 'So...I'm going to go borrow one of Dad's tee-shirts for you to sleep in and give you some of this.' While talking, she stood and crossed to her bathroom, re-emerging with a long tube. It was white, with the blue emblem of St. Mungo's crossed wand and bone in the middle. Snape squinted at it from his place near her closet. He couldn't explain his reluctance to move closer, but he didn't want to get any nearer to the wreckage of his physical body.

'Crooks, will you get one of Dad's shirts? Mum did the washing this afternoon, so it's probably all folded on their bed.'

With a yellow glare that left his mistress in no doubt that such petty thievery was beneath him, Crookshanks stalked from the room, one claw hooking under the door and pulling it open. _That _had been an annoying ability, Snape remembered. Nothing was more disconcerting than looking up to find the door you had previously latched swinging open because the half-Kneazle wanted to come in. And it had been impossible to explain to the animal that sometimes doors were locked for a _valid_ reason.

Hermione had squeezed the light green paste onto her palm and was now rubbing it briskly between her hands, warming it before applying it to his skin. 'This is for bruises and scars, Professor. I hope we can keep you from developing any more.'

Snape stared, remembering the smoothness of that skin as her hands began to work the cream into his chest, over the newly-mended ribs and the large, purple-black puddles forming under the skin. His physical self drew a sharp breath as her fingers grazed over one of the angry cuts Bellatrix had bequeathed him.

'I'm sorry, sir,' she murmured as he stirred faintly, eyes still firmly closed. 'I don't want to hurt you, but this has to be done.' And her hands never ceased.

By the time all the cream had soaked into his skin, her familiar had returned with a white tee-shirt bearing the logo of an unknown company and she had produced a small vial of copper-coloured potion that he instantly recognized. She negotiated herself behind his head at the top of the bed, and then gradually eased herself under him, head lolling in one hand as she patiently scooted, a bit at a time, to support the upper-half of his back in a semi-vertical position, letting his head come to rest on her shoulder.

One arm still curled about his waist to keep him from slipping, she pulled the stopper from the tiny bottle with her teeth, spitting it away for Crookshanks to chase. She slowly lifted the vial to his partially open mouth, whispered a wordless spell to ensure that none of the valuable contents would be lost, and tipped it upwards. She waited until the last drop slid like molten metal into his mouth, then set down the glass and began to massage his throat, starting near his ears and working downwards.

Fascinated by her movements, Snape didn't realize at first that she was whispering again. '...swallow, Professor. I know you probably can't really hear me, but this is the absolutely last thing I need you to do before you can sleep comfortably for as long as you need to. Just swallow. It's Blood-Replenishing Potion. You'll recover a lot faster if you just swallow...' He was surprised to see the muscles in his throat constricting, and equally amazed to see the look of gratified relief on his impromptu caretaker's face.

'Perfect. Well done, sir,' he heard her sigh. She wandlessly Summoned the tee-shirt crumpled on the floor where Crookshanks had abandoned it and lightly pushed it over his hair, lifting each arm in slow-motion to fit through the sleeves.

The effect was ridiculous, in Snape's opinion. Mr. Granger was obviously a lot broader of shoulder, and the end result was that the Potions master looked very much like a boy dressing in his father's clothes.

A long sigh issued from her mouth as she finished, tugging the large shirt straight to cover him completely. The shade could see a smile curving her mouth, eyes sparkling in spite of the large circles under them. 'I doubt you'll like this very much when you awaken, Professor, but you can Transfigure something later.' She then began to wiggle backwards, doing her best not to disturb him.

But this last movement proved too much. The black eyes snapped open, head twisting automatically to discover where he was, whether he should fight, flee or relax-

-the obsidian gaze found the shadow on the other side of the room. Unlike Dumbledore and Hermione, there was no doubt that the body saw the spirit, because the eyes began to narrow-

-Snape was being dragged forwards, the eyes drawing him in as a black hole captures light-

_Wishes come true. Not free..._

-feeling suffused him. Lungs, breathing. Heart, beating. More than a dozen cuts, stinging. Soreness in his abdomen, near the bottom of his rib cage. The copper taste of Blood-Replenishing Potion in his mouth.

He torqued his spine, ignoring the protests from his weakened body. Spirit and body flowed together, mind sealing them and hazing the world of the soul, burying it before Snape could acknowledge it himself, and he was left with a peculiar, grasping feeling...

Part of him thought this room was familiar, safe, a place of peace, a place he _wanted _to be... But that was ridiculous. He'd never seen it before in his life, and he shoved away the peculiar sense of déjà vu that permeated the air. He was in far better condition than he had any right to be, especially since a swift glance at the illuminated clock told him that he had been bleeding to death in his own living room not thirty minutes prior.

Then the voice at his back froze his whirling mind.

'Sir?' came the startled cry.

He became suddenly, sharply aware that the softness underneath him had angled bones under that, lacking the comforting shapelessness of a pillow, and radiated the kind of warmth that only the living produced. Snape jerked himself partially upright and turned-

-to meet the wide, astonished eyes of Hermione Granger.


	2. Past

Disclaimer: Not mine, all the characters belong to our dear Ms. Rowling. And the seeds for the plot come from Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt.

A/N: Chapter number two – I hope everyone enjoys! Thanks to those who have already left me notes. Further feedback is always welcome.

Past

'Remove your hands from my person,' he snarled reflexively, trying to grasp the thundering train of thoughts that seemed to have utterly vanished. The details that had occupied him mere seconds before – including the brief but unnerving and instantly-fading sight of himself as a ghost in the corner – were suddenly and totally unimportant. There were two far more pressing questions:

Why was Hermione Granger, best friend of Harry Potter and thorn in his academic side for five years, sitting with him practically in her lap? And what in the name of Hell's Seven Circles were they doing in a _bed_?

The girl's eyes widened in a familiar and bizarrely comforting gesture of alarm. At this closeness he could see that the dull brown colouring he had given his (admittedly vague) mental picture of his student was incorrect. The irises were two-toned, the darker chocolate ring on the outside giving way to a lighter, almost copper-coloured circle around the pupil.

He was staring, the inconsequential detail having fully occupied him. He struggled to pull himself away completely, only to feel searing pain near his abdomen as his body twisted with the violent impulse. His gasp betrayed him, and small hands were on his shoulders, a quiet voice in his ear.

'...broken ribs, sir,' came the soothing cadence, breaking a wave of agony. 'I'm sure you shouldn't make any sharp or abrupt movements.'

An absurd desire to relax into that voice, to let it carry him, tightened every muscle in his lean body and caused a second spasm to tear through his just-mended ribcage.

'Hands. Off.' The menace hissing through gritted teeth was unmistakeable, and he was dimly pleased when the warm palms vanished, leaving two round, cool spots on his shoulders. He felt the mattress sink and rise as weight shifted and heard her feet rustle against the carpet.

'I apologize, sir,' her chilly voice said from over him as he laboured to breathe, still bent double. 'It was not my intention to cause you such discomfort. Professor Dumbledore has asked that you remain here to heal. I will ensure you are not disturbed.'

Footsteps squashed the thick rug, a hand turned the latch, hinges creaked quietly and a quiet _thunk _marked the closing of the door. Snape collapsed backwards, sweat curling the lank hair sweeping across his forehead.

Sleep claimed his maimed body before he could dwell on the stinging hurt in her last sentence, or the myriad complications of being here under orders.

**********

_11:08 AM, August 2__nd_

'Professor-'

'Miss Granger, I have no idea why it is that the Headmaster insisted on quartering me here. Rest assured that I have no desire to endure your "company".'

**********

_7:23 PM, August 2__nd_

'If I have to repeat myself, girl, I will hex you the instant I find the strength. Get out.'

'You haven't eaten for two days, sir.'

'A deliberate decision, believe me. Assuming the quality of your cooking matches that of your potions, my stomach would not survive.'

**********

_4:42 AM, August 3__rd_

'You've been coughing for an hour, sir. Drink this.'

'I hardly need a child to play nursemaid.'

'Professor Dumbledore disagrees. And you woke me. I would like to sleep peacefully at some time tonight. The Blood-Replenishing Potion is on the side table.'

**********

_3:28 PM, August 4__th_

'What is it this time, Granger?'

'Believe it or not, sir, I am responsible for you. You _will_ eat this. I would hate the Headmaster to come back here and discover you died of stubbornness.'

'That _would_ be a blemish on your perfect record, wouldn't it?'

*********

_6:45PM, August 5__th_

'I got this for you, Professor.'

'I neither need nor want your pity.'

'It isn't pity, sir. I just thought of it.'

'I suppose the appropriate thing now would be to weep with gratitude?'

'A simple "thank you" would have sufficed. But don't worry. I didn't expect to get one.'

**********

_10:42 AM, August 7__th_

'That was a lot of breakfast, sir. Did you get enough?'

'Yes. Where did you find this book you gave me?'

'It was in Flourish and Blotts. I didn't want you to be bored while recovering. Is it good?'

'It's...passable. I – thank you.'

'You're quite welcome.'

**********

_12:30 PM, August 8__th_

'Why do you have so much Blood-Replenishing Potion?'

'I was injured in the Department of Mysteries. St. Mungo's wanted to be sure I would recover fully.'

'I...I had no idea your wounds were so extensive.'

'They weren't. Dolohov used a Slicing Hex on my chest. Other than that, I was lucky.'

'I would not call that luck. Why are you wasting your medicine on me?'

'"Waste" is a relative term. I have enough to spare, sir. And healing you could never be counted as squandering it.'

**********

_8:10AM, August 9__th_

'This was delivered via owl at six o'clock this morning. What is it, sir?'

'_Alchemia_.'

'The Potions journal? I thought you had to be on an exclusive list to receive that!'

'One's name is submitted when one achieves one's mastery in the subject, Miss Granger.'

'Oh. Of course. Sorry, that was...Wait – show me the table of contents!'

'I don't see what could possibly-'

'Your name! You're published!'

'Naturally. You didn't think my entire academic existence was limited to dunderheads in dungeons, did you?'

**********

_9:56 PM_, _August 10__th_

'Why counter-clockwise stirs?'

'To ensure that the ingredients merge completely. Mixing in one direction gives a potion layers, almost like the strata in mountain rocks or in the air. Most potions are functional in such forms, but one of the many marks of a master is perfection in the blending. Some draughts, like Wolfsbane, are so sensitive if you fail to stir it in the opposite direction, it is ruined.'

'Why didn't you ever tell us that in class?'

'To become a Potions master is difficult and demanding work. To the unpractised eye, the exact art of Potion-making is identical to following any recipe in the_ Joy of Cooking._ This lack of passion largely produces useful, but uninspired, potions. To cut the wheat from the chaff, to determine those who might have the talent and the inclination to pursue the science as a career, all masters deliberately leave out certain details. True understanding of how various substances react will lead the gifted to the correct conclusion without help.'

'Oh. Professor?'

'Yes?'

'Did you mean what you said about dinner and my potions?'

'Don't you still have Minerva's essay to do?'

**********

_1:34PM, August 11__th_

'I really want to know, sir. Am I hopeless in Potions?'

'Do you cause your cauldron to explode an average of six times a year?'

'Well, no-'

'Then you are not hopeless.'

'You know what I mean.'

'You brewed Polyuice in a bathroom at the age of thirteen, Miss Granger. Why do you need me to tell you what you already know?'

'Because you're the only teacher who never has.'

'If I say it, will you drop it?'

'I'll try.'

'You're the best mind I've had in Potions since I started teaching. Stop relying so much on the textbooks to have all the answers and you could be quite the accomplished brewer.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'I'm already sorry I told you. Take that ridiculous grin off your face.'

**********

_6:29PM, August 11__th_

'You made it all the way around the room without running out of breath!'

'Do not fuss as if I am a baby learning to walk.'

'I'm glad you're feeling better, sir.'

'So am I. Perhaps now I can persuade the Headmaster to allow me back into my quarters so that the rest of my summer will be spent in peace.'

'You've been reading in bed for the past ten days!'

'And answering the never-ending questions of the nosiest Gryffindor ever to pass through Hogwarts.'

'Sorry, Professor. I had no idea your summer holidays had a word limit.'

'Indeed. One I fear I passed within the first twenty-four hours in this room.'

**********

_11:17AM, August 13__th_

'Is there anything your parents need? Potions that I can brew for them?'

'I doubt it. They're quite accepting of my status as a witch, but I don't think they'll ever really feel comfortable with many things about our world. Miracles in a bottle amongst them. Why do you ask?'

'I do not like a debt unpaid, Miss Granger. And while your cleverness and the Headmaster's ingenious wards have kept them unaware of my presence in their house, I am here, nevertheless. Were they to desire anything, I would be bound to supply it.'

'What if _I_ require something?'

'Happily, the duty does not extend to annoying students.'

'I'm hurt, Professor.'

'Most reassuring. You smile too much. I was beginning to fear I'd lost my touch.'

'You have, sir. There's something about seeing you in a white tee-shirt that damages your vampiric image.'

**********

_10:15AM, August 14__th_

'Thank you...Miss Granger.'

'Hermione, sir.'

'It is not appropriate to address you so casually.'

'Professor, you have slept in my room and in my bed for the past two weeks. Please...at least when we're not at Hogwarts, let me be something other than your student.'

'What would you rather be?'

'Your protégé. Your friend?'

'That is not possible. It is too dangerous.'

'For whom?'

'For both of us. No matter what we-'

'...Finish what you were going to say.'

'No.'

'Please.'

'It is irrelevant. Students are not "friends" with their professors. Thank you, Miss Granger, for your discretion and your hospitality. I am indebted to you and yours. If you are ever in need of assistance, allow me to fulfil my debt.'

**********

A persistent tapping at the window brought Hermione from a light sleep to full wakefulness. Scrambling from her four-poster bed, she threw open the drapes, wondering who had been sent something at six o'clock on the first morning of school.

The owl winged through the window the instant the witch opened it, hooting at her gracefully as she shivered and hastily locked it again. The second day of September, and already the wind bore the freezing promise of the coming winter.

A heavy parcel was attacked to one leg. She reached for it, frowning as she noted that it had no address. The bird had selected their window, therefore the package must belong to either herself, Lavender or Parvati. 'Is this for Parvati?' she asked the owl, extending her hand towards the curtain-swathed four-poster. Quick as a flash, the bird's beak darted forward and sharply pecked her hand.

'Ow!' she hissed, nearly dropping it. "You don't have to gouge me to get your point across!" The owl blinked its yellow eyes with absolutely no sign of remorse. Carefully, Hermione considered the plain brown wrapping, the rectangular shape and the weight. It was almost certainly a book. Therefore, the logical answer was...

'Is it for me?' she gestured to herself with her now-bleeding hand. Her silent companion cocked its head at her, which she chose to interpret as a positive sign. 'Okay. I'm going to open it,' she warned, fingers inching towards the Spellotape. The bird didn't move as she slit the tape and peeled back the coarse paper.

The gift was a textbook. One of the many she had already purchased – and a battered one at that. _Advanced Potion-Making._ Curiously, she flipped it open, wondering why anyone would send her such a beat-up old volume. But as the pages fell open, she gasped.

It was covered in tiny, cramped handwriting, abridged instructions and improvements littering the recipe she had selected at random. Hurriedly, she flipped through the rest of the book. Every page had extensive scribbling in the margins – disagreements with the uses of equipment, with instructions, with ingredients. Whoever had doctored this book had poured a great deal more thought into making potions than she ever had. Eagerly, she opened the front cover, hoping to find the name of her unexpected benefactor. She was to be disappointed.

_This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince._

**********

He did not allow her to see the smile that torqued his mouth as he studied her Draught of Living Death. Both of her textbooks lay open, the crisp pages of the Flourish and Blotts copy lying partially-buried beneath the scrawled-on pages of his old book as she cross-referenced instructions and jotted notes in her own.

Her work, always well beyond that of her peers, now sparkled crystalline and perfect, steam streaming upwards in pale blue from the lavender concoction.

'Well done,' he rumbled appreciatively, pleased to be able to acknowledge her efforts for the first time since he had started teaching. She smiled instinctively at the praise, then noticed his gaze dropping to the scribbles on the tattered and yellowing sheets. With almost guilty haste, she reached to close it, only to have a long finger settle on the page, arresting her movement.

'My desk after class, Miss Granger.' He did not say it angrily, but she swallowed nervously nevertheless as he strode away to make scathing remarks over Ernie MacMillian's cauldron.

'Sir?' she said tentatively, standing in front of him as the rest of her classmates filed out. She used the opportunity to study his face. He had always been sallow, but the first few days at her house this summer, his skin had been positively grey with blood-loss. He seemed at ease now, his faint natural colouring having returned to normal, along with the sinuous gait that had been a limp the last time she saw him.

The black eyes flashed towards the door, saw it close, and focussed on her. 'The book, Miss Granger. Kindly return it to me.'

Her eyes widened with surprise, then she shook her head in mute denial. 'No, sir. I would rather keep it. It's so useful – I think whoever wrote it is a genius.'

His lips curved in a genuine, if small, smile. 'You are a bit premature in jumping to that conclusion, but nevertheless, I thank you.'

It took approximately five seconds for the Knut to drop. _Return it..._'You?' she asked, a breathless quality of excitement creeping into her voice. 'This was your book?'

'When I was taking precisely the same class you're in now.' He extended a long hand.

'Please, Professor-'

'No, Miss Granger. I had it delivered to you to make a point. Every single one of these potions can – and should – be improved upon. But you should not merely follow the instructions that I have written down, as you should not simply follow those in your book. Invent your own. You have had twenty-four hours to see how it's done.'

Pleading double-toned eyes met his, but Snape merely waited, hand outstretched. With a low sigh, Hermione reached into her bulging schoolbag and withdrew the weather-beaten volume, reluctantly setting it on his palm. 'Thank you. Dismissed.'

As he watched her let herself out, his last class for the day silently taking their seats, the Head of Slytherin tucked his old text under a stack of parchment, wondering at the uncharacteristic impulse that had caused him to send the owl yesterday morning. The instincts he had trusted for his survival for many years were all screaming at him now.

He had worn the iron chains of certain servitude all his life, and the uncertainty she brewed in him had been eating him for the past three weeks.

Fawkes had delivered him directly to his dungeon office from the Granger household in mid-August, and Snape had blown a long sigh of relief as his fingers found the aged wood of his desk, creeping blindly over the quills neatly lined in one corner, the ink bottles stacked in an orderly row exactly as he had left them six weeks ago.

For the first terrible moments after realizing his mistake with Bellatrix and Narcissa, he had been convinced that he would never see this place again. Much as he loathed what he did at Hogwarts, there was no denying that the castle's chilly stone was more his home than the ragged trappings at Spinner's End had ever been.

But his surroundings, after the initial surge of recognition, had seemed colder than previous years. Emptier. A faint regret – one that had grown stronger with the passing weeks – had wafted through him, and he had searched for the cause, stopping short when he realized what he was suddenly missing. The sound of turning pages. The whisper of curtains being drawn aside in the morning as she entered, throwing a warm room open to fresh light and air. The smell of coconut-cream shampoo mixed with the strawberry-scent that had positively soaked the sheets of Hermione Granger's bed.

And her voice. Bright, inquisitive, often sparkling with laughter at some known or disguised amusement.

He had opened the trunk his employer had clearly gathered for him sometime over the past two weeks and lifted the spellbooks out by hand, thrusting them violently at his desk and revelling with each heavy _slap!_ as leather met wood.

For two glorious weeks of summer, he had wakened from the nightmare of his own existence to live someone else's life. He had been simply Severus Snape, enjoying the unexpected gift of intelligence and pristine conversation, the interests of a mind that, while not nearly as disciplined as his, was equally clever. For the first time in nearly twenty years, teacher, spy and soldier had all ceased to exist.

'_Your protégé. Your friend?'_

He had never before wished for such things. Apprentices would be worse than students – he would be expected to spend even _more _time with them. And friends...since Lily Evans had walked away from him at the age of sixteen, he had never had a friendship that existed independent of his work for either of his masters. All those he had counted as his mates during childhood would now be hunting for him, and his fellow teachers had always kept him at a respectful distance that suited everyone involved.

But for a few, shining moments, standing in the bedroom of a young woman aged well before her time, that which he had done without his whole adult life had been offered to him. By an infuriating, superior, rash and, above all, _Gryffindor,_ girl. And his tongue had slipped, betraying how ardently he wished to accept.

He could not tell her. Could not allow her to foster any such false hopes. Some dreams could not be forged into reality. He was traitor, a wanted man, and she was already a staunch companion of The Boy Who Lived. He could not endanger her for the weakness of a few selfish moments. The Dark Lord was nothing if not tenacious – and vengeful.

**********

The coconut smell warned him who he had given permission to enter his office, and he nearly snapped at her to leave. He had regretted his decision to prompt her two weeks ago with his old book. She now peppered him with questions, verbally and scrawled at the end of her homework. They were intelligent, eager and curious, and he had found himself looking forward to seeing the door open on her class, to saving her essays for last – rewarding himself by relaxing with the research she prompted him to do, though he never replied with complete answers. Mostly, he directed her to the library, turning her questions back on her.

_Don't get involved. Don't get attached. Don't let yourself care_. The mantra that had built his narrow path for a harrowing two decades haunted him as he felt it slipping away.

And now she stood in front of him, watching him with the serious face that he had truly looked into for the first time on a summer morning at just past midnight. He could feel her assessing him, weighing the teacher before her now against the man that had slept in her childhood home. He sat straighter in his chair, feeling it mould around him, as if the seat he had occupied for so many years could re-cast him in the part he had played.

'Was there something you wanted, Miss Granger, or are you waiting for me to have some kind of divine inspiration?' he asked dispassionately. He could not summon the snide tone that formed his second skin. This girl had seen past it already – it would be an exercise in futility to turn it on her now.

'You invited me to ask you for help if I need it, Professor,' she started hesitantly.

'Such assistance must remain within the limits of reason,' he qualified instantly.

'I believe it does.'

His hand turned gracefully, gesturing for her to continue. 'I wish to take extra lessons with you in Defensive magic. And I want to include Harry and Ron.'

Black eyebrows hit his hairline in unflattering disbelief. 'Limits of reason, Miss Granger. Surely you jest.'

'Do I look like I'm joking?'

The double-shaded gaze he had noticed with disturbing frequency was completely serious. The professor shook his head, wishing he had never made her such a promise. 'I do not think that would be advisable.'

'Why not, sir? Your position as a spy has been completely compromised.' At his faint start, half of her mouth lifted in a smile. 'Professor Dumbledore told me what they found in your house, Professor.'

'He should not have given you that information,' Snape said, his stiffness completely genuine.

'I believe he felt I had earned some measure of confidence,' she replied smoothly. 'And all of this is beside the point. You no longer have to curry favour with Voldemort – but your service with him makes you an invaluable resource when it comes to surviving battles with the Death Eaters. And, as you have spent so many years protecting us already, why not teach us how to do it ourselves? It would save you a great deal of work.'

_Imminently Slytherin_. He felt a flash of approval and ruthlessly squashed it. 'Indeed. However, the endurance required to put up with Potter and Weasley might test my limits.' Even as the words slipped through his lips, he heard the lightness in his tone and wondered at himself. Yes, there was more about life that was more pleasant now that he no longer feared the burning of his Mark. But not _that_ much.

'They will behave. I will ensure it.' There was steel in that voice, and he was abruptly grateful _not _to be one of the two boys under discussion.

Voluntarily enduring Potter and Weasley? But the girl had a point. And if she could get Potter to swallow the reflexive hatred that had jumped from one generation to the next, there was much he could teach the boy. 'Then I believe you have crossed the one and only insurmountable barrier.'

This was probably a terrible idea. But the training he could offer them was invaluable. And he suddenly found himself with an unacknowledged, but very personal, stake in her survival. 'If you can guarantee me that Potter and Weasley will take instruction as men, not as tempestuous children, then I will.'

A smile stretched on her lips. 'You'll really teach us?'

'I just said as much. Ten points from Gryffindor for your expression, Miss Granger. I may change my mind.'

**********

'Why _Snape_, Hermione? You know he hates us.'

'_Professor_ Snape. And the feeling is entirely mutual,' he heard her counter dryly. Contrary to his customary policy, the Potions master had permitted himself to be a few minutes late to their scheduled meeting. Old habits died hard, and he was deeply curious about how Potter really felt about being strong-armed into these lessons. It had taken him less than forty-eight hours in her house to learn that Hermione Granger's powers of persuasion were not limited to a honeyed tongue. Her hexes were formidable. He had little doubt that two-thirds of the so-nicknamed "Golden Trio" had been all but forced into coming.

'We're taking lessons with him because his...position...gives him unique knowledge. Tonks is a great teacher, but Professor Snape has first-hand experience that she'll never get.'

'Yeah, because she was smart enough not to get a bloody skull tattooed-' There was the heavy _thud _of a book on flesh, and a strangled, high-pitched yell from Weasley.

'Occlumency lessons were a disaster,' Potter continued gloomily, and Snape felt his gut tighten. Had the boy told them about his snooping, the humiliation he'd found floating in the Pensieve?

Hermione's quiet question erased that fear and dosed him with a small measure of respect, to be added to the stock begun with Potter's leadership of the DA. 'You never did tell us anything about that. What was the real reason behind his decision to stop teaching you?'

'Private problem, 'Mione. Sorry.'

'Then it shouldn't get in the way now.'

'But Snape can hold a grudge,' Weasley's voice piped up again. 'We've known that for years. And he does pick on Harry more than anybody else-'

'For the same reason that the press continually splashes his name all over their front pages, Mr. Weasley,' Snape announced his presence, gliding around the corner. All three teenagers drew up tightly, tension stringing through them palpably, like a switch had been thrown to activate an electrical current.

'Professor,' Hermione acknowledged him quietly. Harry and Ron jerked their heads at him too late and murmured, 'Sir' in obedience to their friend's fierce glare.

'Your hide had better be thick, Potter, if you wish to outlast the Dark Lord. Consider this lesson number one: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." A children's rhyme that nevertheless holds a grain of truth. The Dark Lord will hurt you in any way he can find – and he has a better understanding of your psychology than you think. Follow me.' They followed him out of the empty classroom, curiosity increasing as they strode towards the main entrance hall and out the doors.

'Where are we going, sir?' Hermione asked.

'Questions are to be asked at the end of the session and it is my discretion as to whether I answer them.' He knew his tone was harsher than she deserved, but his mind had suddenly supplied the memory of this bright voice in the streaming sunlight of a new summer day, and a sense of breathless homesickness briefly swamped him. His strictness forced it back to the corner from whence it had come. 'I do not indulge in senseless chatter while working, Miss Granger, and I expect you to remember that.'

The September evening brushed cool on their faces, the dew already gathering on the grass smearing against shoe soles and robe hems as they crossed the great lawn.

'We're going to the Quidditch pitch?' Potter asked incredulously as the six hoops became dimly visible as shadows cutting circles against the stars.

'Tell me, Potter, can you see?' Snape needled. A mutter answered in the affirmative. 'Then learn not to use your tongue quite so much. I know that Professor Tonks is now teaching you wordless spell-casting. Apply the discipline to the rest of your life as well.' He could feel the seething of the younger wizard's untrained mind, broadcasting resentment and sighed silently. What on earth had prompted him to accede to the girl's request? If it were a matter of just teaching her...

'Tonight's lesson will be a combination of new technique and showing me what you already know, so that we can develop a useful course of study. A critical skill while fighting a battle is to be aware of not just your enemies, but also your allies. Many of the tactics that you use will depend on the terrain in which you are fighting,' he started quietly, stopping at the edge of the field. 'This is a wide open area. You have no cover, no natural lines of defence, and very little that you can Transfigure, levitate or animate. I will be fighting all three of you. The first to neutralize the opposite team wins. All legal curses, spells, and enchantments are allowable. I trust it almost goes without saying that Dark magic is forbidden.'

The older wizard glanced down at his pupils, eyebrow raised in a silent invitation for questions. The boys had wrapped their fists around the wands in their pockets, gazes trained on the darkened field before them, already cataloguing assets and weaknesses. He met the brown eyes last. They were sparkling with a smile that did not touch her lips. _'Thank you,' _she mouthed.

He jerked his head away from the face that continued to walk through his daydreams and nodded at the flat, empty space before them. 'Your head start is sixty seconds. At the end of that time, I will begin hunting you.'

**********

'Sir?'

'Out with it, Miss Granger,' he murmured from the cauldron simmering in one corner of his classroom. 'If you ever find yourself at a loss for a question, be sure to inform me.'

She ignored his commentary, weathering it indifferently, like a buoy in rough waters. 'Sir, is Draco Malfoy a Death Eater?'

He froze, still stooped over his work, hands halfway to the glistening surface of the potion he was brewing. It took him a full minute to straighten his spine, vertebra by vertebra, and pin her with a thunderous look, eyebrows drawing together over his large nose in a deadly glare.

She swallowed. Hard. She had learned a few of his facial expressions that summer. The mild manner he had brought to their few extracurricular lessons so far had vanished and the nightmare of his worst professor persona stood before her. The look he turned on her now was one she had only seen directed at Harry – and Sirius Black.

'Where, you silly, _stupid_ child, did you stick your bushy head to hear about that?'

To her credit, she did not cry, though her lower lip twisted with the effort to control her filling eyelids at his sudden savagery. When she finally managed to speak, her voice was quieter and higher than usual, but steady.

'Harry's been...Harry followed him. On the train. And heard him bragging...and he does seem really distracted this year. He barely insults even _me_, and that's not like him.'

'Not _everything _revolves around you.' The coldness in his voice frosted the room, curling around her heart.

The black eyes were utterly unfathomable. The young Gryffindor suddenly had no desire to plumb their depths. Their nascent affinity, sometimes bordering on affection, had completely disappeared. She turned, her shoulders hunched against him, an inadequate physical protection from the rain of insults and abuse she expected to hear.

Suddenly, with such startling clarity it stopped his breath, he was seeing another witch, a different woman, turning her back on a man who daily caused her pain, her slender body unable to withstand years of wearing from fists and tongue-

_Mother_, he bleakly acknowledged the long-dead Eileen Prince. And as Hermione Granger's shuffling steps took her to the door, he felt bile rising in the back of his throat. His father had crowed at his ability to reduce a witch to such a state without magic. The only man he had _never _wanted to be...

'Miss Granger.' His voice cracked on her name, grief and self-disgust wreaking havoc on his control. He found that he didn't care – as long as she left his presence free of that half-step, the walk of a victim tentatively skirting a treacherously vicious master.

'I apologize,' he said quietly. 'My reaction was...inappropriate.' She had turned back to him out of respect, but her back grew no straighter. He groped for the words he had never told anyone. The only person he had been willing to beg for forgiveness had completely thrown him aside. In the years since, he had been in his knees only once to genuinely plead his case – and that had been in front of Britain's most powerful wizard.

'I assumed...Don't play with fire, Miss Granger. It has a nasty tendency to burn. You may tell Potter the same.'

'You've spent the last two months teaching us how to fight fire,' she answered quickly, her confidence cautiously returning as he hadn't resumed yelling.

'A large part of what I have taught you is how to avoid it,' he parried quietly.

'You haven't answered the question, Professor,' she pressed bravely, meeting his glance once more.

He gazed into the open, trusting cinnamon eyes and found his smooth lie of reassurance evaporating. He could not tell her a falsehood. 'Is Malfoy a Death Eater?' she pressed, stepping closer to him, as if knowing her proximity would be his undoing.

'Yes.'

'Is he doing something at Hogwarts this year? Something out of the ordinary?'

His confession almost felt programmed. 'Yes.'

'Then we have to stop him.'

'The Headmaster and I are dealing with it, Miss Granger,' he warned her, stepping backward and intentionally returning to his work. 'Please trust the adults to handle this situation.' The dark eyes met hers once more, emotionless in deliberate complement to his colourless voice.

'I do not want sixteen-year-old children getting in the way. Do not mention this to Potter.'

**********

'Shield Combustion Charm, Miss Granger? That _is _rather advanced,' Snape said quietly, handing the young woman a cup of tea.

'Thank you,' she answered smugly, tucking her stocking-clad feet under her in her armchair.

It was late November, and his exclusive trio of students had just succeeded in winning their game for the very first time – capturing and disarming him after two hours of cat-and-mouse in the forbidding mountains above Hogsmeade.

Six months ago, the removed wizard would have laughed in the face of anyone who told him that he would one day be proud of James Potter's son. But a reluctant, astonished pride was what he was coming to feel for all three of his private pupils and their performance. He had long since surrendered to his admiration of Hermione Granger – his only battle now was the daily fight not to let it show – or deepen. But Potter's ingenuity surprised him, and Weasley's innate courage shocked him. The heavy reliance his employer had on these three and their chance to stop the Dark Lord was gradually beginning to make sense.

'Potter cast the charm, didn't he?'

'Of course.' She shrugged, sipping her brew. 'Harry is obviously the most powerful of us, which makes him the best choice.'

'Do not underestimate yourself,' Snape cautioned her mildly, seating himself across from her.

A flip of her hand. 'I'm not. But I think it's clear that there's no contest when it comes to raw power. I made Polyjuice at thirteen and Harry learned to cast a Patronus Charm. You can draw the conclusions yourself.'

'Where did you find it?'

'In _Advanced Defensive Technique._ We used the Room of Requirement to practice it a bit.' Another sip, and then she set her porcelain cup on the small table next to her chair, feet hitting the floor as she leaned forward, changing the subject.

'On my last essay, you wrote that I could find information about Ancient Runes and Curse-binding Potions in _Bleak's Anthology_. But I haven't found the book, not even in the Restricted Section.'

Snape allowed a smug smile to touch his mouth. 'Naturally. _Bleak's Anthology_ is one of the many texts banned at Hogwarts.'

Irritation flashed. 'Then why recommend it?'

A crook of his finger brought a tiny, ancient tome sailing off the shelf behind her and into his hands. 'The Headmaster has not censored my private collection, Miss Granger.' He extended the volume, which she eagerly took, settling back in the large chair to read.

He watched her hair fall forward to frame her face, casting it mostly in shadow as she delved into the book without further conversation. Contentment washed through him in a moment stripped of context, narrowing his life to this room, to the young woman seated across from him, to the fire cracking in the grate and the heat of the porcelain under his fingers. Following a life devoid of such moments, he found them increasingly addictive, snatching the minutes from his real life like a junkie greedy for his fix.

They had started this tradition more than a month ago, the first time she had been hurt during their extra lessons. Side aching under the blast of a head-on Stinging Hex, she refused to go the hospital wing. _'You'll have to explain why_,' she had gasped. _'And that's precisely what we want to avoid.'_ He had sighed, agreed to give her the antidote himself, and intended to send her on her way with chocolate and an admonition to rest.

But she had questions regarding her schoolwork, and he found it impossible not to answer when she asked. They had torn open Potions journals, textbooks and his old notes, laying them on the floor of his private study as they cross-referenced, debated and discovered. He discarded his teaching robes when he had made their tea, ignoring the informality of his manner and their interaction, forgetting that _this _was exactly what he had denied her that summer.

It was past one when they had both glanced at the clock and scrambled to their feet, drawn upright by the instant awkwardness that replaced the ease of their interaction. They knew what it would look like to anyone who saw her leaving his office at such a time.

And the fact that the assumption would be wrong brought him no peace of mind. It did not change his growing struggle against the desire that would make such a supposition correct.

He covertly watched the fire dancing on her cheekbones as her eyes devoured the pages, her mouth the only dynamic part in her still body; opening in an 'o' of surprise, repeating a complex concept in a whisper, thinning when reading an application of magic she disapproved of.

Why hadn't he said no, the next time she had asked? How had he allowed this to become habit, despite all his best instincts? After decades of carrying a torch for a dead love, how had this girl – barely more than a child – sailed into his world and persuaded him to put it down?

**********

'Miss Granger?' He called her name softly in the silence of the laboratory, not wishing to startle her if she was still working.

Getting no response, he entered the small side room that he had so rashly given her a key to forty-eight hours prior, slowly pushing the door open.

His searching glance found her sprawled across her table, a Stasis Charm freezing her concoction as she slept, back twisted into an awkward position, rising and falling in even strokes. Hesitating in the entrance, the professor slowly stepped into the room, gently closing the door behind him.

He strode to his sleeping student slowly, his booted feet moving noiselessly over the cold floor until he was level with her experiment, reading her hastily scribbled, scratched-out and water-damaged notes upside down. He had given her the task of researching the effect and possible undoing of the curse Gryffindor Katie Bell had inherited from that damned necklace. True to form, she had devoted every free minute during the past two days to discovering what she could.

Twenty years of habit had vigorously opposed this display of trust, the permission and means to invade the only part of his world that had been off-limits to two masters for years.

_Curing the Bell girl is a priority_, his rational mind supplied a reason for his madness. But that wasn't the real cause – and he knew it. Disasters – physical and mental – had plagued the halls of Hogwarts for as long as the castle had existed. It was an expected risk with teens and magic. No matter how desperate the situation, he had never allowed anyone inside the lab before.

No...what he wanted was to see her hands where his had been, watch those small fingers running along the tables he had worn smooth with years of working. He wished to see her prints on the jars of ingredients he had stacked around the walls, to feel the signature of _her _magic when he entered the room, as surely as he could smell the coconut of her shampoo.

To give them both some measure of what they wanted, knowing that it was not all that he desired but unable to take any more – and damning himself for the fanciful thoughts that ambushed him when sleeping, when grading, when she sauntered into the Great Hall with her friends.

'_Your protégé. Your friend.'_

She could be a protégé...a maddening, disorganized, fascinating one. The sheer quantity of space her notes required meant that her thoughts needed ordering, and the parchment could do without the punctures of exclamation points...but...

_Nineteen Muggle owners dead...Katie not Muggle-born...curse is _universally_ applicable...Charms? Arithmancy? RUNES!! Curse-binding Potion? Tourmaline for countering nerve disruption? Bloodstone = unstable heart?_

His finger lingered on the text. The words curled under his skin close to her face, the full mouth slightly open to blow warm air on his flesh, and he wondered if he dared touch her smooth cheek, the shadowed curve of an ear, half-buried in the messy mane she never took time to manage. Her eyelashes fascinated him next, elongated by the black shadows they cast on her skin. Despite the importance of the work her exhaustion had interrupted, she looked peaceful, completely unburdened and at rest, as if she would wake to a world where Voldemort was little more than the bogeyman of a vague dream.

The sigh of her breath as she tilted her head slightly met the faint echo of his yearning in the silent air, and Snape swiftly withdrew his hand. A quick transfiguration produced a forest-green blanket where his over-robe had been, and he carefully draped it over her, ensuring that his hands did not brush any part of her body. She was seventeen, an adult-by-law who was still a child under his care.

He shut the door soundlessly and left the torches burning behind him.

**********

As Arthur Weasley stood to give his Christmas Eve toast, the Burrow's fireplace flared green. The shadow that whirled out of it stood pale and panting, as if he had run a marathon. The clipped words he uttered shot panic through his listeners.

'Death Eaters. Hogwarts.'

'What? Now?' Harry shot to his feet, sending his chair crashing against the wall and loosening dust from the ceiling beams, but no one so much as flinched.

'Yes. Now,' Snape answered hoarsely.

'Who's there?' Arthur's wand was in his pocket as he moved towards the fireplace, deadly determination in his face.

'Nowhere near enough of ours. I would estimate that better than half of the Dark Lord's army is there already.'

A string of fluid cursing sounded from the mouths of a half dozen people, including the mild patriarch. 'Molly, alert Alastor. Remus, if you wouldn't mind coming with me-?' he turned to the werewolf for help, and found himself facing a table full of sons who had risen as well.

'We're coming,' the twins announced in unison.

'I'm not letting you go by yourself, Dad,' Bill said firmly.

At another time, on a different day, there would have been an argument. But every second wasted here meant the deaths of children, and none was voiced. 'Fine. Let's go,' Arthur replied impatiently, and stepped into the green flames. Three of his sons followed him, along with more than half the celebrants, but as Harry Potter reached the fire, a long hand shot out to catch his arm.

'Where, exactly, do you think you're going, Mr. Potter?' Snape hissed as Order members continued to stream through the fireplace and vanish.

'To fight, sir,' Harry answered, and though his voice was sharp with anxiety, those still assembled heard the lack of animosity and looked up.

'Out of the question.'

'We have to! The Death Eaters are there – and there're still students at Hogwarts,' Ron protested indignantly.

'A situation that hardly gets solved if more students throw themselves into the fray. The Dark Lord is not there. Nor is he going to appear tonight. Stay here, Potter. The world needs you alive.'

'But we can't sit and do nothing!' Harry snapped, jerking his arm away from his professor angrily.

'That is precisely what you are going to do.' Ebony eyes swept from green to blue to brown. 'You will stay here. All three of you.' The mutinous look in the young man's face deepened, and Snape sighed. To the astonishment of the few people still at the table, the hand moved to settle on Harry's shoulder in the gesture of a father.

'This is not a request, Potter. I have spoken no more than the truth, and, as your superior in the Order as well as your teacher, it is my duty to see that you remain out of harm's way. I know what the prophecy says about you. I know that your Gryffindor nature cannot abide the thought of sitting on the sidelines. Nevertheless, for the good of the wizarding world, that is your job tonight. I cannot be efficient as a soldier if I am worrying about you. Neither can anyone else.'

The younger wizard's stiff posture began to slacken, and bitter understanding replaced the anger in the green eyes. 'Yes, sir,' he replied neutrally.

'I am not under-age,' Hermione announced, shaking back her curls. Even as her two best friends rounded on her, Snape pinned her with a glare.

'You _will _stay here, Miss Granger. You might be of age, but I still outrank you, and _those _are my orders.'

'But I-' she stopped, unable to continue. She didn't know how to say that she wasn't sure she could stand hours of waiting and pacing, her eyes glued to the Floo connection until his return. She couldn't give voice to the storm of helplessness that closed her throat when she imagined he might not come back. There was no way to tell him that she would rather fight, and die, if necessary, as long as she could stand by him on the battlefield.

'No buts,' he responded, and something must have shown in her eyes, because his voice turned gentle. 'Your help will be needed here when the wounded start coming through.' His eyes darkened in bleakness. 'Because they will be coming.'

'Severus? Are you returning? The last have gone through and I need to use the fire to speak with Alastor,' Molly Weasley interrupted gently.

'I am,' he said. A small hand touched his sleeve, detaining him as he started to turn back to the mantle. His gaze followed it up an arm to a sorrow-filled, earnest face. So many things to tell her. So many things he wanted her to know. The student he had not stopped himself from falling in love with, the woman he might never see her become.

Time was moving. Molly Weasley was waiting.

'Be careful. Sir.'

She let him go, and he ducked under the old marble to re-enter darkness.

**********

'We're lucky it's Christmas,' Ron said grimly, wiping his hands on a towel and smearing the white with liberal streaks of blood. 'It would be much worse if they'd gotten in during term.'

'Yeah,' Harry whispered, his stomach knotted. In a separate room, hidden from the rest of the frantic activity at the Burrow, lay the body of Albus Dumbledore. Neither boy had been able to bring themselves to look at him as Minerva McGonagall had carried him through, face soaked with tears. Neither wanted to make the nightmare a reality by gazing on the crumpled face, by touching the dead limbs.

'Seamus said that Malfoy did it,' the red-head murmured, eyes straying to the dining room door and the hall their Deputy Headmistress had taken the Headmaster down.

'I can't...I can't believe it,' Harry replied brokenly. 'I can't believe he's – it's _Dumbledore_. I keep waiting for him to walk in and announce it was all some terrible joke...'

The feeling of something warm in his hand, the smell of chocolate filling his nose. 'Drink, Harry,' said Hermione's soft voice. He obeyed.

When his green eyes cleared of tears, he was gazing into her smudged and concerned face. 'Has everyone else made it back?'

The way her eyelids fell closed as she swallowed convulsively gave him the answer. 'Alexandra Riggs,' the witch answered in a whisper. 'She's a Ravenclaw – encountered the Death Eaters somewhere near Ravenclaw's common room.'

'They killed her,' Harry completed the story hoarsely, letting his own eyes close against tears.

'Yes. But other than her, and...and the Headmaster, and-' she swallowed, willing her nauseating fear to disappear, '-and Professor Snape-'

The jade orbs slammed wide open. 'Is he-'

'I don't know!' The anguish in her cry made a confession of the feelings she had denied for all the months of the past term. 'Everyone else has come back. But he's...there's been no word,' she finished dully, glancing about. The main floor had become a full-blown triage centre. Every set of linens, sheets and towels were in use. Any cloth that could be used for bandages had been claimed. Ron and Harry were both shirtless, having ripped theirs to staunch the wounds sustained by professors, Order members and their peers.

'He's an amazing wizard, Hermione. I'm sure he'll be fine.' Hermione could hear the lie in Ron's voice, but threw her arms around him anyway as the blue eyes sought hers, willing her, at least, to believe it.

'Malfoy killed Professor Dumbledore,' she murmured in his ear as he stroked her back soothingly. 'If he can do that-'

'He can do anything,' Harry finished grimly. Ron scowled at him.

'I'm trying to be of comfort here,' he hissed.

'We have to be realistic,' his best friend responded flatly. Two sets of eyes flickered to the only clock in the Weasley household that actually told the time, hanging next to last year's old calendar. It was nearly one in the morning. Snape had arrived more than three hours ago to warn them about the attack, and the last survivors had come through the fireplace more than thirty minutes prior. Every ticking second brought them farther away from his chances of survival.

'Could we go after him?' Ron asked them both in a low voice. 'It's getting quieter here – Ginny's already slipped off to bed, and so have some of the others.'

'We can't get through the fireplace,' Hermione told him as she stood up, her shoulders slumping as she steadied herself against the table. 'Professor McGonagall drew an Age Line and spelled the Floo – anyone under eighteen can't get through it from this side.'

'They really wanted to keep us out of this one,' Harry muttered, idly twisting the wand in his pocket.

'Professor Snape was right,' she choked out quietly. 'We would have made it worse by our presence.'

'So...in that case...bed?' Ron suggested, jerking his head at the stairs. The candles hovering around and over them were dimming as the uninjured streamed towards their make-shift beds and the few deputies that Madam Pomfrey had hastily appointed moved amongst the mattress-strewn floor.

'Yep. Hermione?' Harry turned to her as she didn't move with them.

She cast a last glance at the fireplace, where the flames still glowed their natural colour. She could hear the second-hand on the wall behind her. _Tick. Tick. Tick._

'Yeah. I'm coming.'

***********

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

It was now only a few minutes to three a.m., and Hermione Granger tiptoed through the maze of restlessly-sleeping Order members and students that littered the dining room and parlour floors of the Burrow. Near the window, she could make out the Hogwarts Matron dozing lightly and she expertly skipped over the creaky wooden boards to station herself next to the banked fire.

As she approached, she could feel the pressure of the Age Line rejecting her, making sure that she kept a distance of more than five feet from the glowing coals. A note of irrelevant worry struck her – would Snape make it through the Floo if the fire wasn't actually burning on the receiving end? – before she remembered Harry's trip to Knockturn Alley and his emergence in a darkened grate.

_Tick. Tick. Tick_.

She hadn't been able to sleep, turning over and over in her bed next to Ginny. She had to know. If the sun rose before her professor returned, she would dismantle the Age Line and go after him herself.

What if he was bleeding to death _right now_? What if they could have saved him, but hadn't? What if he were lying trapped somewhere, breathing the last of his air and praying for a member of the Order to arrive-?

It was ten after three when something began to whirl into view in the fire. Heart lodged in her throat, wand clutched in her hand, Hermione waited for the figure to stop spinning, preparing herself for the visage of a Death Eater-

The newcomer straightened, stringy black hair shadowing his face, his thin mouth set in a ruthless suppression of pain as he limped from under the mantle. His black cloak hung tattered and torn from lop-sided shoulders and crimson bloomed from both cheeks.

But he was alive.

Time crystallized, freezing around her as the breath she had tried to choke rushed out of her in a strangled sound of disbelieving relief, and she felt herself moving, tears salting her lips.

'Miss-?' His hoarsely surprised whisper was all that escaped before he stepped across the Age Line and found himself holding an armful of Gryffindor witch.

The heat of her night's worrying met the collapse of the self-control he'd struggled to exercise for months. She felt his hands slam against her ribs, tearing her from the ground, his shaky breath against her nose, brushing her cheeks-

In a rush of adrenaline, of barely-contained despair and wildly unleashed hope, his mouth met hers in a bruising kiss, both seeking nothing more than to devour that which they had feared lost.


	3. Future

Disclaimer: Not mine, all the characters belong to our dear Ms. Rowling. And the seeds for the plot come from Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt.

A/N: Chapter number three – I hope everyone enjoys! Thanks to those who have already left me notes. Further feedback is always welcome.

Future

Even as the hot desperation of their first kiss drowned him, absorbing him, Snape felt himself drifting, his perspective changing. Lungs ceased to breathe. Heart stopped beating. The pliant mouth pressed ardently against his faded into nothingness as his own ability to touch disappeared.

'You have to let yourself go, Severus.' Lily's voice was in his ear as he longingly gazed down at the scene rapidly falling farther away from him. 'This is all history. What is done is done. You have to release it...'

He struggled to re-enter his body, just to feel, one more time, the sweeping ecstasy of her exploring fingers, of her skin next to his. But he kept losing ground, the distinct figures blurring and becoming one with distance.

He would always remember the argument they'd had following their first encounter, when daylight had begun its first appearance on the horizon and he had regained his sense of who he was.

'_Miss...Hermione. We can't do this again,' Snape said gently, stroking her hair. She had attended to his leg, he had performed the other minor healing spells he had needed, and then she had settled herself on his lap. They were seated on the bare floor, his back aching as he leaned against a white-washed wall without a single cushion to intervene between the old structure and his bruised body. He couldn't have cared less. A feeling of youth, of having a world laid at his feet such as he had always heard about but never experienced, inundated him. Irrational though it was, with this witch in his arms, _anything _was within his grasp._

_The euphoria was fleeting. He had to push her away._

'_Why not?' she asked quietly, her jaw moving on his chest where she had tucked her head._

'_I would have thought the gross inappropriateness of our actions tonight was obvious,' he tilted back at her, but without rancour. 'Both on the grounds of my age and position of authority.'_

'_You're no longer my teacher,' she answered, lifting her curls from over his heart to look him in the eye. 'The damage to the castle means that Hogwarts will be closed – unless the reports coming through were greatly exaggerated. But also...' she swallowed, tears filling her eyelids as she bit on her lower lip to contain an unreleased pain. 'With the Headmaster...'_

'_Yes,' he whispered. 'Draco...I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself.' His hand returned to her hair, working through the snarls as he came to them, their steady breathing completing the spell. The barriers erected tonight had to remain firm. There would be a time and a place to admit to the agony of losing their powerful mentor._

_But it was not tonight._

_He felt her intake of breath before the words that left her mouth. 'It means that you won't be teaching Potions again. I wanted to be your friend. Now I want to be something else.' The two-toned eyes searched his face for a sign as to whether she should continue. 'More.'_

'_Nothing can eliminate the differences in our ages. Or change the fact that my past makes me fundamentally unsuitable for a young woman like you.'_

_A sardonic smile. 'Naturally. I'm well known for my obsession with brooms and my love of _Witch Teen._ After all, what could be better than an evening of dreaming about dating a Quidditch star like my roommates?'_

_He had laughed, a full, rich sound, unmindful of the sleeping patients strewn about the floor on their haphazard mattresses. And she had pressed her point..._

They had argued as deep purple became twilight blue, as Venus made her short appearance over the eastern horizon and vanished in the advancing rays of sunlight. When the rest of the house stirred, Severus Snape was seated alone, his bandages well tended-to, but he had given way in the face of her tenacious determination.

For the next two and a half years, he had shared her life. Until he had watched it end from Azkaban's tower.

**********

He was re-materializing in the same small, book-filled room that he had inhabited...months? a few moments? before.

Once again, he was not alone. But this time he was facing the echo of the young woman he longed to see.

'Severus?' The delighted lilt was more welcome than any melody composed by a master. 'Were you there?' Her gesture indicated only the books, but he understood the question.

'I was,' he admitted, one of his phantom hands reaching up to capture hers.

Instead of meeting the warm flesh he'd just left, their hands passed through one another, tingling only faintly as they mingled halfway.

'Death has been much better than I anticipated,' she told him, and her eyes sparkled.

'Did Potter or Weasley greet you when you arrived?' he asked, focussing as he lifted his shadow arm again, pouring his sense-memory into recalling the nerves he'd had while living.

A strange look flitted across her face, too brief to define, for all that he knew her quite well.

'Yes...a Potter did find me when I...after I died.'

The hesitation in her voice cued him. '_A_ Potter?' His eyes searched their space, flickering rapidly to the bookshelves surrounding them. His original guide had not re-appeared, her voice once again faded into nothingness. 'Was it Lily?' he asked quietly.

She gave him a sharp look. 'No,' she answered slowly. 'Did Mrs. Potter meet you?'

'Yes. She was the only one before I...before we...returned to the world of the living. But if it wasn't Lily-'

Her drawn breath told him the truth even as she moved to speak.

'James Potter.' The note was just barely above a growl.

'Yes. But I don't know why. I obviously never met him, even if Harry was like my brother.'

'Potter.' It should have been a snarl, but Snape found that most of his vitriol had been used up in the first realization, and now the fact joined others in a line-up of curiosities. It was something to be examined when and if one had the time and the inclination.

As if their shared name summoned them, the air to the left of the settee shimmered, and Lily Potter was once again standing in front of him. Another stood at her side. Messy hair, thin face, glasses...brown eyes, no scar.

'Severus,' James Potter greeted his one-time antagonist, voice almost friendly. 'I owe you a debt of deepest gratitude for your many years of faithful guardianship. I well know that Harry would not have survived as long as he had without you and met his death when he ceased to follow your advice.'

The leftover surge of mouldering resentment and stewing hatred that had bubbled inside the darker wizard for two decades vanished with the soft-spoken words of thanks. In death, James Potter had, finally, grown up. 'You're welcome,' Snape allowed, hardly knowing where the words had come from.

Silence settled, a peace so new – so foreign – no one knew how to test it.

'It is time for you to move on,' James said after an interval that threatened to become awkward. 'To see the other side of the coin, the other half of the bargain.'

'You mentioned changing the future. Re-writing history,' Snape said slowly. Lily nodded once, cautiously. 'This new timeline,' he pressed on, searching her face, 'Would your son survive?'

The traded glances told him all he needed to know, and a slight, ironic smile lifted his thin lips. 'So. It is not only I who stand to gain from this.'

Lily's green eyes glittered briefly with an emotion he could not catch as she tilted her red head. 'You are not.'

'But that is neither here nor there, Severus,' James interjected softly. 'It is your decision to re-cast a _world_, not one life, or even a handful of those wasted. The future of Britain is yours to choose. Observe.' His command echoed in the space, but the books remained unmoved.

'What?' Hermione asked.

'The future-that-will-be. You must see what will become of the world that you have lost,' Lily told the younger witch.

'I think we can guess-' Hermione said, her voice catching. Even as a shade she bit her lower lip. 'I – I saw enough of death-'

'Unfortunately, this, too, is not something that we have ordained or have the power to spare you. It has been commanded that you go. So you must.'

'How? We lived in the past – our bodies, our souls, had an anchor there. Only a grave exists in our futures.'

'True. You will witness the future-that-will-be through other means. Other eyes. Eyes of those like you.'

'Like us?'

'How do you mean-?'

'You must observe,' James repeated his order firmly. 'You both know that words can only carry us so far.' He scanned the bookshelf and selected a new volume, pulling it down.

'Like the first one Lily gave you, this book is a window to the mortal world.' He extended it to Snape, the ancient text held perfectly flat, meeting the obsidian gaze. 'As with the first, we have no power to open it. We can but show you which book to examine. This one will give you what is yet to come.'

Snape glanced towards the one and only student that had ever become anything more to him to see her eyes fixed firmly on the book, curious excitement and dread plain on her features. Aware of his scrutiny, she lifted her eyes and tilted her chin at the tome.

'If we can change the future as you said, we must see this. Open it.'

He raised both eyebrows at her characteristic impatience, but obeyed the order, once again flipping open the cover. Paper rustled as an unfelt wind brushed through them, tangling Hermione's rich curls. The study was already dissolving, their guides vanishing with it, mist boiling in around them. Snape kept his eyes on Hermione, afraid that it would swallow her as well, but she remained as translucently real as he was.

As with her Muggle neighbourhood, the world before them was being drawn in swift, straight lines, a sketch rapidly expanding in all directions, flushing with colour and shadow to become three-dimensional. A half-deserted street.

Recognition struck him so violently it was painful, and he heard her gasp in shock.

The familiar shape Fortescue's ice cream parlour was boarded up, much as it had been on their last visit in life, but the weathered boards betrayed the passage of the years, scrawled on in violent yellows and reds by at least one generation of graffiti artists.

Beyond Fortescue's was the creaking sign of the Leaky Cauldron, long since out of business, a hunchbacked skeleton – probably the one-time proprietor – hung over the door. A child of five stopped to stare, his mother yanking him away impatiently, the wearing sign of permanent fear haunting her joyless eyes.

Where was the world of their childhood, where magic seemed to tumble from the stones themselves? Snape recalled with tearing clarity the first time he had entered it. He had gaped at this story-world made flesh, owls swooping overhead, clutching hand-me-down books and robes, but a brand-new wand and fresh ingredients in his hands. The soaring, innocent hope that had filled him as his eyes travelled hungrily from treasure to treasure, seeing in the world only a potential to make unimaginable discoveries, poured through him bitterly. The dreams of thousands of children – rotted. How many like him held half-citizen status, their blood tainted by the larger Muggle population? How many Hermione Grangers had 'disappeared' at ages seven or eight, their talents now an abomination?

His gaze shot to the end of the alley, where Gringotts had dominated. A peculiar sense of relief stole through him as he studied the marble facade, floating over the street like the ghost he was. Gleaming and polished, it, at least, seemed unchanged.

The relief faded as he looked to Ollivander's ancient wand shop – now re-christened _Peverell's Legacy Wands_ and the old _Flourish and Blotts_ store. Their dilapidation stood out starkly next to the smooth, shining bank, its beauty corrupted by its flagrant display of wealth and standing amid the ruins. A young woman strode up the broad steps, shimmering robes of mesmerizing turquoise shining beacon-bright amongst her drab fellows, the only person in the entire alley who looked as if she belonged to the world promised by the glittering marble. Two men in robes of crisp black marched closely behind her, a third young man in non-descript brown with red hair tearing along desperately at her heels. He hurried to reach the massive wooden doors ahead of her, pulling them open for her entrance. On his left arm, Snape saw not the Dark Mark, but a simple 'X' slashed into the skin. Drawing level with him, the woman and her guard didn't so much as glance down as he sank into a deep bow and then scurried after them.

He rotated, numb...only to find that the brick wall that had separated the Alley from the Muggle world for centuries had been blown away, the jagged remains of hardened clay stubbornly attached to the buildings on either side of the entrance all that had survived a violent opening.

Through the gap, as the woman and her small entourage disappeared into Gringotts, they could see a girl running towards them, growing clearer all the time, pursued by something they could not see. Her eyes lifted, and, as Snape knew he had seen himself in the corner of the Granger's house, he knew that the little girl was gazing right at them, seeing them where others would not.

'Me...' Hermione whispered, and vanished. Snape's useless hands reached for her, as if his ghost limbs could restrain her flight.

'Hey!' The cry was a boy's, as real and immediate as if the former spy were standing right on top of him-

-he glanced down, met blue eyes staring at him intently-

-his vision faded, self, faded-

-he was gazing out of those blue eyes. Small-ish hands, bruised but muscular legs. Slender, still short. No more than fourteen, no less than twelve.

The first sensation to sting him, flaying his nerves, was the wind. It raged around him. It seared as it whistled, tearing between the once-proud fronts of the shopping district, whipping at the clothes of the people scurrying around him. No one stopped. No one spoke. No one smiled. Certainly no one allowed their gaze to linger on the young woman running flat-out down the rough cobblestones, no more than a few metres away.

She was in danger. The DS were following her. Snape didn't know how he knew, but there was no room for doubt in the certainty of this mind.

'Helena!' He hissed, wildly waving to her. Her name came easily to his lips.

'Sam?' she panted.

'Quick! Inside.' He pulled Hermione-Helena behind him into a shop that looked as though it had been gutted and looted so many times that the iron bars on the windows were as much for show as the exhausted wards.

'You were stealing from Greengrass Books again,' he said flatly, gazing at the heavy volume.

Her eyes glittered, one cheek smeared with dirt that followed her cheekbone, making her look like the native of a far-off land. 'Master Malfoy's latest order.' She settled the tome carefully, almost worshipfully on the ground. '_The Wand-Makers' Companion_.'

Sam seized Helena's wrist as she reached for the rich leather cover. 'You can't read this,' he said hoarsely, voice loaded with fear. 'I can't read this. You can't even look at it. Helena...Class Four Untouchables can't have wands.'

She wrenched away from him, terrible bitterness distorting her voice. 'I didn't ask to be born an Untouchable. What am I supposed to _do _with what I have inside me?'

Her friend shook his head. He didn't know, truly, how Helena had escaped the Squads as a child. Her talent was remarkable. She could even work spells with his Uncle Mel's wand, not that the old man knew they'd snuck it after one of his brandy-induced stupors. But that she had survived to thirteen without being shipped to a camp...

He gazed out the window, and felt his mouth twist into an ugly sneer. Perhaps the camps were better than here, though. The pickings of a once-grand society. The faded sign over the alley marked _Di g n Al e ._ The boarded-over windows, and their worse cousins, the shattered ones whose edges gaped like teeth at the edge of an unhealed wound. The graffiti-scrawled walls. There were not many left now who remembered, and even fewer who would talk about it. About the hustle and bustle of a street hidden from Muggle eyes and packed with wonders. A world in its own right, a slice of wonderfully busy secrecy...the large marble bank at the end had done commerce instead of standing as a permanent, sparkling reminder of slaughter. They said that Goblin ghosts could still be heard running through the well-swept cellars, swearing vengeance on their murderers...

He shook himself and placed a hand firmly on the cover again. 'Helena...'

'I cannot run forever!'

'And if you do not? What will you do? One woman, fight an army? The Death Squads are everywhere. The Circle has their spies in every wall.'

'Better to die fighting than live a slave!' she blazed. 'Muggles don't live in the lap of luxury under our lord, but they live better than I do here.'

'But you _do _live. And not in a camp!' he hissed fiercely.

'Open up in there!' The order came from outside. Her disappearance had not happened soon enough. The teens glanced at each other, terror claiming their eyes, before their gazes fell on the book lying between them.

Their death sentence. Helena snatched it up. 'Get out!' she hissed, rising with the forbidden text clutched to her chest. 'Back door!'

'No! I'm not leaving you here to face them alone.'

'Sam!' She started with exasperation, but he was surprised to see a smile of unexpected sweetness curving a mouth uncut by laughter lines. She stepped closer to him, making him aware of her in a way he had never acknowledged before, and the fourteen-year-old swallowed hard as he studied her dark eyes. 'I'm an Untouchable, Sam. Class Four. There is nothing in this world for me.'

'I'm here.' He hadn't meant to say it. He wasn't supposed to say it. Wasn't supposed to _think _it. A Class-Four Untouchable, and he was merely a Class I Impure. Half-blooded. He could own a wand and a business. Marry a pure-blood and his children would be allowed to attend Hogwarts...

No future.

'Last time!' snarled the voice from the other side of the door. 'The Dark Lord will hear of your resistance!'

'Go,' she whispered.

'No.' She was so close that he could feel her rapid breathing in the flutter of air on his neck. He moved closer, blue eyes fixed on the full mouth that deprivation had not thinned.

'Sam...'

He kissed her.

The door burst inward.

**********

Snape heard Hermione gasp her last sound as their shades reeled from the beaten bodies. 'Us...' Pearly tears glittered on her translucent cheeks. 'Us...how many years from now?'

'Does it matter?' he asked grimly, wishing more than ever for the solidity of arms that would hold her. The ruined Alley and her decrepit buildings had disappeared, an eraser taken to a pencil drawing, but another landscape was emerging before their eyes, as if they were Apparating in slow-motion, detail becoming visible a heart-beat at a time.

Barbed-wire crackling with magic grounded to each spire made twisted crowns atop soaring brick walls. A chimney smoked in the middle of the square, belching steam in many colours. Even as a phantom, Hermione paled.

'No...'

Snape scanned the interior from where they stood, on what seemed to be battlements right next to the wire. Tents were pitched by the hundreds in orderly rows, and thousands of people milled about beneath them. Their shoulders sagged. Their posture and the rare glimpse of faces told of a hope lost.

But it was the absolute silence that chilled Snape's blood. So many people...there should be noise. Noise generated by people talking, by guards barking orders, by mutters, by whistles, by footfalls.

All muted. He did _not_ want to find his equivalent here...

The gated entrance was a shimmering tapestry of magic, deep blood-reds, richly-textured blacks and sickly yellows wove a poisonous prison so dense that the phantom struggled to distinguish the physical features from their storm. A queue stretched out in front of it, the mass of Muggle-borns waiting for processing, as unnaturally silent as the world inside.

'Figg, Ector.' A man stepped forward, lifted his head-

-dark eyes locked on Snape, the now-familiar feeling of being pulled in-

-and he was staring at the pudgy, bored, dully malicious face of the guard, two small hands tucked into either of his. Sons. Five and eight years old. Both magical, like their father. Both terrified. He could hear their forced-silent breathing.

'From Leytonstone, East London?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Two boys?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Class Four Untouchable? Boys a Class One? Half-blood mother?'

Ector-Snape's jaw locked, and he felt his elder son's hand squeeze so hard his fingers grated together. But mouthing off to a camp guard was as good as turning your own wand on yourself. Through gritted teeth, he answered, 'Yes, sir.'

As the guard's Quick-Quill scrawled, Ector scanned the women's line for his wife. His darling Cassandra had been clever enough to hoodwink the Ministry into accepting their wedding ten years ago, and hide them for that decade. When he found which neighbour had finally turned them in...she had flatly refused to leave him or her children when the Death Squads had come to call. As merely an Impure, she could have saved herself with the divorce contract he had begged her to sign...

'Finished, you deaf Mudblood,' snorted another guard, prodding him in the back. 'Inside.'

He balked, staring at the gates. Once you entered the barbed wire, you didn't come out. Unless it was as part of the ashes that billowed twice a month from the crematorium. No one escaped. The few attempts at rebellion had littered the countryside with corpses as the Death Eaters and their special squads ruthlessly destroyed it.

'If I have to tell you again, mister, you'll be walking through the gate with only one son.' Ector nearly swung on the man, fury surging. The man was a born bully – petty, impatient, the perfect man to commit murder without worrying about going to sleep at night.

'_Don't talk back!'_ had been a last piece of advice at the Portkey station, a hurried whisper passed from one arrested Muggle-born to another. _'They hold everything dearest to you. Never open your mouth.'_

He mastered the impulse to strike the thug stalking at his back and started through the gate. He fancied he could hear them locking behind him, even though they remained gaping, ready to receive the full total of today's victims.

'Where's Mum?' Kaye, his youngest son, whimpered.

'I'm sure she'll be along soon,' his father assured him, squatting down to look into his son's grey eyes. They were a gift from his light-eyed mother, Ector was sure. The whole Figg family had been dark, for as many generations as they could count.

'Will we ever get to go home, Daddy?' That was Arthur. Ector took a deep breath.

'I don't know,' he admitted. 'But I _do _know that we are going to-'

'Ector! Arthur! Kaye!' Cassandra had arrived in a whirl of golden-red hair and hugs, seizing her sons and squeezing them until they couldn't breathe. 'I'm so glad,' she gulped down air, eyes over-bright with tears. 'They're making Selection.' She jerked her chin towards the forbidding chimney. It would be smoking long into the night.

'Selection?' he whispered.

'Yes. Hurry – we can join that queue over there.' There was a twisted line patrolled by another pair of weary guards, where dozens stood clumped together in family groups while waiting for their tent assignment. Cassandra snatched up Kaye's hand and started for the relative safety of the housing queue. Once you were assigned, they wouldn't kill you. Not if you were useful and obedient enough. They always needed competent magic-users...

'Not you.'

Black robes, black belt, black gloves, black wand. It was said you couldn't be a member of the Elite Executors unless your wand was made of blackthorn. Something about the quality of the wielder...

'Sorry?' Ector breathed. His wife was now twenty feet ahead, intent on her goal, not looking back.

'That line. You and the brat,' the EE man said emotionlessly. The tilt of his head was for the Selection queue. Ector's heart skipped several painful beats.

'_The only thing come out of that are the bodies.' _He could not remember where he had heard the rumour, but it sounded in his head with thousands of voices. _'The bodies...and the colours of the magic we _don't _have.'_

'We're new. We're strong. We can work,' Ector begged, tucking his son halfway behind him, as if to hide him.

The gloved hand shot out, seizing Arthur's chin and dragging him forward, turning his head brutally, giving the boy a light slap. 'Work? This little nothing? Don't waste your breath, Mudblood.' The wand rested against Arthur's forehead, the point twisting like a drill. 'It's a pity to waste anything on you, little one. Even a Killing Curse would require too much effort.' There was no change of expression on the unyielding features as a knife appeared in the EE's other hand.

The silver blade was dimmed with usage, but as the winter sun glinted dully on the vicious edge, Ector felt the world fall away. His head lightened, almost floating. His ears were stoppered by a strange buzzing. His vision narrowed to the strip of steel.

As it began its slow slice towards Arthur's jugular, Ector moved with it, almost dreamlike, his body matching the sweep of the blade-

-it bit through his skin, tore past his ribs and ground to a halt just outside his stomach. For a moment, there was no more than a peculiar wetness, as if water had been poured down his back to soak him-

-and then came the panic. Deep and throbbing. There was no pain, shock buffering his nerves from knowing what he had done. His knees buckled, and he flopped into the snow, red spreading from him in a bloody wave.

Screaming. Crying. Cassandra's red hair fluttering at the edge of his vision...

'Stupid Mudblood. No better than you deserved,' sneered the EE, looming over him. A yank, pain blossoming as the knife pulled free with a sucking sound.

'Ector? Ector! Hold on! I'm sure they have a Healer.' His wife's beautiful face filled his narrowing eyesight, mouth distorted by desperation.

_For me? A Class Four Untouchable? No, my love. I have reached the end of my line. It's time..._

A thought. He had to say it. Cold snow, under him. Tiny flakes. So small. So incredibly perfect. One, then another, and another...until he had a blanket. But a blanket should go over him, not underneath...

One thought. Had to say. No breath. Very important to let out his last thought. 'Cass....? ...love you...'

**********

Silence as the decrepit tents and billowing chimney of the camp compressed together, spiralling inwards and dragging the two un-living with them to materialize in an unrecognized neighbourhood. Like the Grangers' area, it was all neat hedgerows and prim doorsteps. And the sky was an unclouded blue, the ruin of soot, smoke and Dark magic left behind.

'I cannot bear to watch you die again,' Hermione whispered hoarsely beside him. Snape felt her not-solid fingers brush against his, and he could not bring himself to meet her gaze.

'I watched them hang you. In real life. In _our _lives.' Had he lived long enough, the last few seconds of her jerking body before stillness claimed her would have haunted his nightmares for the rest of his life._ 'In full and in blood'_ he had told Lily. _If I can spare you, I must..._

Phantom-Hermione opened her mouth to respond, but stopped as two children came skipping into view. In a breath, the shades had vanished into the living humans.

They were young, certainly no more than nine years, and they were racing towards the merry-go-round. It began to whirl before either touched it, and was speeding merrily when the girl-Hermione jumped, her white-blond braid sailing out behind her. She landed, catlike and laughing, on the spinning wheel. The boy-Snape hesitated for several beats, as if gauging the best time and place to join her.

'Come _on_, Aren! Just jump!'

'I'm coming, Gwyn!'

He waited another moment, then bent his legs to spring. His leap carried him to perch where the six metal bars joined in their starburst centre, and he stood slowly, swaying to keep his balance as it spun faster.

Laughing, Gwyn darted from the brightly-coloured wheel, racing to the monkey bars. 'Watch!' she demanded of her playmate, now doing a flamingo impression atop the twirling carousel. Staring intently at the low-hanging bars, she willed...and they _grew_. Metal creaked, undulating as it reached skyward.

'You know you're not s'posed to change anything,' Aren said with a trace of a pout as he bounded down.

'I'll change it back,' she answered flippantly, sticking her tongue out at him as she began to climb. 'Not my fault you're scared of heights.'

'I'm not!'

'Are too!'

She giggled as he eyed the now ten-foot-high bars, swallowed and started up after her. She climbed faster, scrambling to reach the top before he could on the opposite side. Swinging her legs through, Gwyn began to race him to the middle. Aren caught the glimmer of competition in her grey eyes and set his teeth. She was _so _infuriating – had to win at _everything..._ He swung down, whispered a levitation spell he had read about in a book of his father's, and raced towards her.

'Cheater!' she announced when his nose bumped hers. She was only a third of the way across. He laughed. 'You made yourself lighter!'

'You made the bars taller,' he countered.

'Teach me?' she breathed, swinging backwards violently and twisting her torso to bring her legs up and over the side, narrowly missing him as he hastily moved a bar back. Dropping her arms, she squinted at him from upside-down. 'How to do it?'

'Maybe,' he said coyly.

'No fair, not telling.' She crossed her arms huffily, and he grinned. Gwyn could be terrifying to when she was truly aroused to anger, but it was impossible to take her seriously when her deep purple tee-shirt had slid halfway up her abdomen and her long hair draped down like a gold-spun tail.

Serious, measured footsteps. In a hurry. A swift, panicked glance at the still-turning merry-go-round brought it to a halt, and Gwyn's fierce stare shrank the monkey bars back to their normal height, her braid dragging in the dirt.

Aren's father came crashing around the corner. The boy shot a terrified glance at Gwyn, who was warily watching his father in turn, one arm reaching up to grab a bar and pull herself parallel to the ground.

'Aren! There you are!' A firm hand gripped his upper arm, squeezing so tight the boy winced in pain. The empty black eyes of the father grazed over the girl's dirtied braid, her half-upturned face slowly draining from red to pale. 'What have I told you about playing with trash, boy? She is _beneath_ you.' A gesture of contempt. '_Mudblood_.'

'Don't-' Aren started hotly. His father shook him violently.

'None of your lip. We're going.' Without a further glance at the child he had pronounced judgment upon, he marched his son away, firmly planting his large hand on Aren's head and twisting it forward when the boy tried to look back. Aren wiggled his free fingers in a miserable motion of leave taking...

...the day shifted. The sun set, the moon in her darkness failed to rise. Stars emerged, to be chased away by the strength of the streetlamps.

In the darkness of his room, preparing for bed, Aren heard the _BANG!_ His young heart froze for an instant, then began to hammer loudly at his ribcage, as if it were pounding to get out. He scrambled to the curtains and threw them aside, staring avidly from his second-story window. The glare from his lamp bounced off the glass, so he pressed his nose against it, cupping his hands around his eyes and ignoring the way his breath sent circular clouds up the pane.

Gwyn lived directly across the way. And the Knight Bus had pulled up in front of her house. _'They bring it for the imposters, the pretenders, stupid Muggles who can't do magic and shouldn't try...'_ But Gwyn _could _do magic. She was brilliant at it. It wasn't her fault that her parents were Muggles...

Muffled shouting, the bellowing of a furious man in pain. The flash of spells in the windows opposite, one that deadly green all members of the Empire recognized. The screaming started. Aren moved to plug his ears, stilled his fingers halfway there. No. This was important. He could not be deaf to this.

Nor could he be still. He moved from the window, barrelling down the stairs in his nightshirt, headed for the front door. His mother caught him as he savagely twisted the deadbolt, struggling as it stuck in years-long habit.

'Aren!'

'They're taking her!' he shouted at his mother, ashamed to feel water filling his eyelids as he yanked at the door. 'The...the..._them_. They're going to take her away!'

'Sweetheart.' His mother captured his hands, stilling them in his frantic attempt to leave. 'They have to.'

'What – why-?'

'I told you not to waste your time on trash.' His father's voice was surprisingly gentle, but Aren was suddenly flooded with terrible comprehension.

'You...' he whispered, jerking his wrists from his mother to stare at his father in horror. 'You called them.' A tilt of the greying head.

'This is _your _fault!'

'I will not tolerate such blatant disrespect, boy!'

'They _killed_ someone!' Aren shouted.

'Aren!' His mother grabbed his shoulders, wrenched him around to face her again. 'I know it hurts, honey, but it's for the best. Her kind aren't like us. They poison us by their very existence.'

Aren was shaking his head, and he backed away from his mother, eyes flushed with bewilderment, as if staring at a stranger.

'I hate you.' The first was said quietly, almost wonderingly. 'I HATE you!' he screamed at his father, and raced for the living room when his mother's wand re-locked and warded the front door.

Gwyn's pale hair flashed in the streetlight as he pressed both hands against the magic-proofed bay window, horrified that only his eyes could bear witness to the scene outside.

His best friend lay stiff as a board, carried by two men. Aren could see that the one at her head was holding only her braid, as if she were a rag doll to be dragged through the dust. Another woman, an older version of Gwyn, had followed them out. The lamps illumined golden rivers of tears carving their way down her face.

They handled Gwyn into the bus. Her mother rushed one of the Death Squad, wildly striking him across the face. He backhanded her brutally, knocking her to the pavement. Aren saw his square head jerk as he spat on the Muggle woman huddled on the concrete.

'Done!' he heard the shout through the glass. 'Let's get out of here before we have to kill the bitch, too.'

_BANG!_

As quickly as it had come, the Knight Bus disappeared, taking the centre of his world and leaving Gwyn's mother and a black-eyed boy staring red-eyed in its invisible wake.

**********

The spirits exchanged no words. Both had been exposed extensively to the brutality of their enemies in the course of the war, but even as ghosts, they felt slightly sickened at the continuing evidence of a rule-by-terror. Quiet contemplation carried them through the suburban development's morph into a garden of unsurpassed splendour. The question of whose it was died a-borning as a pure white peacock strutted in front of them, fanning his iridescent tale.

'Malfoy Manor,' Snape murmured, breaking their silence.

The night air seemed irrationally cooler to his un-dead skin as he stood under the stars. Twilight's deep, bruised purple had just become full night, lights winking down at them, silhouetting the thick rose bushes bursting with blossoms. Dulled like the rest of his senses, the ex-spy found that he could not smell the breeze of what was probably a summer evening, or the perfume that the rich petals were doubtless wafting over the massive lawns.

The internal pull that had guided them for the whole of their grisly tour nudged them towards the imposing facade. Mutely, they obeyed, Hermione wondering if the internal numbness that had grown so familiar might have finally claimed her. The shades glided inside, slipping through the massive oak double doors like breaths of wind. Like the carefully designed landscape outside, the interior of the Manor was much changed from Snape's memories. When Abraxas had passed the Manor to Lucius, the son had adjusted the main hall to have rows of floor-to-ceiling windows on two walls according to modern fashion, allowing sunlight to flood the space, making it feel expansive. Lucius' parties had never failed to convey a sense of total freedom, a visual question mark as to where the house ended and the gardens began.

But Draco had returned the vast hall to his grandfather's dimensions. Thick stone lined all four walls with only a few large windows – most of them covered with rich, forest-green drapes – punctuating the space. Exquisitely brocaded tapestries sweeping from floor to ceiling could not eliminate the cold that seeped from the rock. Even as a spirit, Snape felt an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia. This gathering, though well-attended, was perfectly confined, the walls a guard against a world the glittering women and silk-draped men dared not observe.

Snape forced himself to study the faces of the people present. They swished and whirled together, a collage and barrage of finery that seemed starkly offensive after the compulsory dreariness of the people in the ruined Diagon Alley, the dulled terror of the camp and the desperation of little Aren's neighbourhood. The smiles on these faces were often tight, and many of them had predator's eyes.

He caught a glimpse of the host's pale hair under a chandelier, but a flash of hatred kept him from drifting any closer. The boy he had tried to save. The son of an enemy who had far surpassed his father's brutality. The murderer of Albus Dumbledore. No...Draco Malfoy was probably the only person he still despised, even in death.

And now he had a receding hairline and deep, harsh lines around his eyes that indicated a lifetime of cruelty. They must be at least half a century into the future – the student had already outlived his one-time Head of House by at least two decades.

Lost in study, he hadn't noticed Hermione drifting away from him, her outline flickering amongst the guests as she sank into them, no longer hovering above but mingling between, passing through the painted ladies and their brusque companions. She was searching for someone.

He followed the pearly outline towards the glittering, double-diamond doors that lead to the back balcony. Hermione slid through them and, noiselessly, he trailed in her wake.

'They own everything you can see,' he said softly as they paused over the deep-veined marble. 'To the edges of the forest to the south and west, and the lake in the east.'

'So much beauty.' He could hear the marvel in her voice. 'Created by those who sow and reap only hatred.' Suddenly, vividly, Snape recalled Hermione as a child, and how much she had suffered before the sneering bully who had watched her hang, and the father who had encouraged his son's blind prejudice.

Without waiting for a reply, she sank straight downward through the chilly stone, seeking once more. They passed the massive willow, a tree Lucius had once boasted was at least half the age of the manor itself. Snape and Lucius had hidden under as boys, it had later served as the site of his friend's marriage to Narcissa, and still later the place that six-year-old Draco sequestered himself to play with Lucius' wand.

The blond boy that had looked to him for guidance no longer existed, but as the wind blew thin, whippy branches aside, a flash of silver-white caught the phantom's eye. It seemed that some things had remained constant.

He gently brushed his hand through Hermione's shoulder, gesturing. Unspoken accord brought the two shades closer-

'Lucius?' Snape was surprised by the force of his own dismay. He had given up his boyhood friend in the Forbidden Forest when he had begged Dumbledore for Lily Potter's life. But this pale figure, skin so drawn he appeared ill, the hair he had pampered so going limp as it silvered, grey eyes dulled in silent, endured torture...

For this Lucius, now in his mid-nineties, Severus Snape had died half a lifetime before. But the shade easily recalled the arrogance that had once oozed so effortlessly from Britain's wealthiest wizard, the absolute coolness the younger man had much admired. Both had vanished and with them, some previously undefined spark of personality.

Noise. The snap of a carefully placed foot that had nevertheless hit a twig. A stifled, whispered exclamation. Lucius' head lifted, hand going automatically to the cane set at his side. In spite of his appearance, he was quick as ever, and the grim cast to his eyes made Snape grateful that he was not the unfortunate on the other end of this wand-

-he was turning even as he thought it, and his eyes collided with a pair of bright, inquisitive blue that widened as they connected-

-and he found himself staring directly into the business end of the Malfoy patriarch's polished elm wand.

'Grandfather – don't!'

A dark head of curls darted in front of him, shielding him as pleading fingers reached for the wand-tip. 'He's not – that is – we're...'

The slate grey eyes swept over them and Gareth-Snape held himself very still. There were rumours that floated through the kitchens, winding their way through the footmans' lodgings, whispered on the servant staircases. It was said that the current Lord Malfoy was nothing compared to his father. That Lucius Malfoy had been one of the original Inner Circle, one of the few to believe before the Dark Lord's power and terror had enveloped the whole of Britain.

No matter his age, he still held his wand like a man born on a battlefield, and the stormy eyes studied them with a touch of barely-masked contempt. Possessing innate talent, but denied the use of a wand, Gareth fervently hoped that this was not a challenge. He would not come out of it alive.

He could only pray that Julia-Hermione knew what she was doing. She was the old man's favourite grandchild, illegitimate daughter of the house that she was.

To Gareth's surprise, the wood fell at the barest touch of her fingers, rapidly restored to its place inside the ebony cane that was no longer merely an affectation. Affection erased the contempt Lucius bestowed on the manor's servant as he gazed into the rainy-day eyes of his son's youngest. Affection – tempered by the sorrow that quirked his lips.

'Has it come to this, little bird? You are ready to fly?' Julia stared at her grandfather, completely wrong-footed. The smile grew a little. 'You think I am too old to see what is under my nose?' Bitterness flashed in his features, narrowing his eyes. 'Your father makes that mistake. I do not.'

'No...I...Grandfather, how did you...?'

'I have lived a long time, my child.' Desolate sorrow twisted the once-proud face briefly, and Gareth wondered what the elder wizard was seeing in the privacy of his mind's eye.

'You have had no eyes for the young men who come weekly to court you since your debut this last spring,' he continued, pulling his focus back to her face. 'A woman of nineteen is not blind to the charms they display you. But a woman in love is heedless of all save her beloved. The estate has now over one hundred servants of all ages, and you have always been curious and friendly. It took only a little observation to find the one on whom you've set your heart.'

The grey eyes shifted back, and Gareth tensed as emotion vanished, leaving only quiet calculation. 'You have power, young man. A great deal of it. Power and intelligence. Enough to make it over the channel?'

Gareth nodded, almost a bow. He had never been directly addressed by anyone in the family other than Julia – who only half-counted because her mother had been no more than a servant, a Muggle-born witch, not the lady of the house.

'I can defend myself, Grandfather.'

'It will take both of you and a life's worth of luck to leave Britain,' he answered her sharply. 'You have an ally – make sure you use him.'

Gareth hardly dared credit his ears. They were leaving, planning not only an elopement but a betrayal of their country, and Lucius Malfoy, one of the most savage Death Eaters ever to exist, was all-but-giving them his blessing?

'You look shocked, Gareth, son of Gawan.'

He swallowed, hard. How to answer? It was said that the oldest rank could read minds like their lord... 'Speak honestly. With me, here and now, there is no need to stand on ceremony. None is here to witness it save the moon – and she has been observing the foolishness of men for millennia.'

'I am surprised, sir. I expected-'

'Who goes there? What are you doing out here?' The aggressive call of a guard, striding round a twist in the path, startled them. His wand was raised in warning and threat as he approached, star-and-moon light too dim for him to see their faces.

'Who is it?' he ground out. '_Lumos!'_

Gareth could hardly credit his eyes with what happened next. A dazzling brilliance lit the wand-tip, sweeping over their faces and blinding him. Reflexively, he lifted a hand to shield his eyes, jerking Julia to stand behind him-

-the guard called out a rapid stream of names, summoning others-

-there was a quiet, almost casual murmur from his right side where Master Lucius stood-

-a sucking wind that felt as if death had crawled into his skin rushed past him, streaking in green light-

-the guard collapsed, an abandoned marionette, and his wand went out, plunging the night once more into darkness. Gareth blinked ferociously, trying to clear his vision. When he finally succeeded, he wished he hadn't.

The guard lay in an awkward heap, his final, frozen look one of absolute surprise. Slowly, Gareth lifted his gaze from the sightless one of the man on the ground to the quiet resolution of Lucius Malfoy's.

'They will be coming. Now. Your window is narrowing. Get out while you can.'

'You...' Gareth couldn't make himself finish the thought. He _knew _what the Death Eaters did. _Everyone_ knew. But he had never witnessed it first hand.

'I killed him,' the patriarch said quietly. 'As easily as we swat flies and slaughter meat for our table. I take no pleasure in it, but my ability to feel remorse was buried generations ago. There is only the satisfaction, this time, of knowing that I have bought a chance for someone I love.' He stepped forward, brushed a loose strand from Julia's forehead, and leaned forward to plant a kiss on her brow. 'Go. Find your new world. The one we have created is no more than a ruin.'

'Thank you,' she whispered, and Gareth could hear her throat close with tears.

'Come with us, sir,' he urged suddenly.

'No. It is my fault that Britain has suffered what it has. Mine, and those like me. I have wished for years that I had perished in the last days of the war with my beloved wife, but my punishment and penitence has been to see what I promoted destroy a world that I loved. I cannot leave.' Another touch of that bitter smile. 'It is kind of you to offer.'

'Brian?' Another guard. Running footsteps from at least three of the garden paths.

'Go on!' Lucius hissed, gripping his wand in his hand, grey gaze scanning the darkness around them. The mantle of an old man disappeared, replaced by the fighter he had become so long ago. 'Leave, before they can trap you!'

Julia hesitated, her lower lip in her mouth as she gazed at her grandfather, his feet planted firmly on the ground beneath his willow. _'When they bury me, it will be here. Alongside my dearest Narcissa.'_ How many years ago had he said that to her? She had been a child, and though he was already old, she could not have imagined her grandfather vanishing into the black, leaf-dusted loam. She had giggled, unable to conceive of childhood world without him.

She was no longer a child. And his words had proven prophetic. He would fall here.

'Brian's dead! We have a traitor!' came the shout just beyond the screen of whippy branches.

Gareth was tugging her away. 'If we do not run, his sacrifice is useless,' he whispered in her ear.

'Grandfather-'

A whistle of red streaked overhead, striking the willow. An ominous crack sounded overhead. The hasty curse had broken one of the branches on the main trunk.

'Fly!' Lucius ordered, a spell of blazing blue searing from his wand to light the lilacs on fire, revealing two attackers. 'Make the last of my life worthy. Take her as far from this accursed country as you can.' A hex in orange rebounded from his shield, and a stinging stream of yellow surged from the aristocrat's wand. An exhilarated smile at his granddaughter. 'I love you, little bird.'

'Let's go!' And they were running, the fight growing increasingly visible behind them. Dodging bushes, vaulting over half-fences, trampling flowers. A sideways glance revealed moon-silver tears carving tracks down Julia's face.

'He'll never survive,' she gasped as they reached the outer wall, guard positions abandoned for the impromptu battle.

'No. But we will. It was what he wanted.' He took her face in his hands, gently wiping away the tears with his thumb, forcing her swimming eyes to focus on him. 'Julia...dearest...he would not want you to be unhappy.'

'No,' she agreed numbly. She took a deep breath, gathering the significant strength she had always cloaked beneath silk robes and soft mannerisms. Determination glittered behind the water standing in her lids. When she spoke again, her voice was inflexible as iron. 'No. He wouldn't.'

Gareth brought her mouth to his and kissed her roughly, raggedly. She returned it with equal ardour, hands buried in his hair, a seal of acceptance stamped on their decision.

Fire blossoming in livid streaks of trailing spells behind them, they wrenched open the gardener's gate, ducking out of the Manor and into the anonymity of the night.


	4. Present Again

Disclaimer: Not mine, all the characters belong to our dear Ms. Rowling. And the seeds for the plot come from Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt.

A/N: The last chapter! I know chapter three was a bit of a loop, but it had a purpose, I promise! Hope everyone enjoys the last part of the story. Thanks for reading and leaving me feedback!

Present

The darkness of open land and star-studded sky blew away, like so much smoke clearing in rainfall. Numbly resigned to whatever else the powers-that-be required them to witness, Snape experienced a moment of mild astonishment when Dumbledore's library-between-worlds faded into view, the book that had carried them into such a desolate future harmlessly fallen open in his hands.

Hermione was gone. Only Lily stood before him, jade eyes luminous with hope...and sorrow.

'Where is she?'

'The decision is yours and yours alone,' the red-head answered gently. 'You will have a chance to see her again, once you have made your choice.'

The professor studied her for a moment before sweeping his hand about the room, taking in the bookcases, the tome tucked under his arm, the shadow of Albus Dumbledore's favourite tea set. 'I gave you my answer before we began. This has changed nothing.'

'You wished to look before you leapt. I have shown you what there is to know,' she countered. 'But I warn you, Severus: once the bridge is crossed, it will burn. The fork you choose will be irrevocably set.'

'What is the toll for the crossing, Mrs. Potter? What must I pay?'

'I thought that much has been clear from the beginning. To purchase the future, the price is the past.'

He blinked, at first not comprehending. _The price is the past..._Cold rippled through him, a tightening of the gut he no longer had. The Potters had shown them two things: the world they would change, recompensed by the one they would sacrifice.

'We...to effect...to save the future...we must trade...us?'

A nod. 'If you choose to make the change, we swallow the last three years. It is as if they had never been.'

'And Hermione-'

'-will survive. Happily, Severus. There is a future waiting where she lives well into her hundreds, does uncountable hour of research and development in the Department of Mysteries and becomes one of Hogwarts' best-loved Headmistresses.'

That thought alone was dazzling. Her life would not end on the cold gallows in front of Azkaban before her twentieth birthday. All the magnificent potential that had drawn him to her would be turned to the betterment of her adopted people, a long life lived exactly as Hermione wished.

But if payment was to be made... 'This is a future in which I do not feature.' It was not a question, and now sadness outweighed the dreams in Lily's fixed gaze.

'No,' she confirmed, genuine grief colouring her voice. 'You do not.'

'I see.' He turned from her, gazing blindly at the shadowy bookcases, as insubstantial as he, himself, was. Hermione Granger was the brightest spot in his adult existence – and the only true friend he'd made since losing the ghost at his back in his mid-teens.

_Why?_ he wondered bitterly. Why was the cost the one thing in his life he treasured? Why must he surrender the solitary part of his world that he had carved out for himself alone? But he already knew the answer. All things in balance. There was little else of value in his life that could be so offered as a ransom for so magnificent a gift.

'_...well into her hundreds...'_ Could he deny her that? Everything her future offered. All that it should have contained. All that it would. How could he consider saying 'no' when all it took was a word from his mouth to deliver it?

'She will be happy?' he asked softly, almost inaudibly, unable to look at the love of his childhood.

'She will. Her life will tangle around that of another. She need never know that you were the better match.' Lily's voice was gone, replaced by that of his one-time rival. Snape spun back in surprise, ready to eviscerate the other man, only to find his tongue dry at the compassion on James' thin face.

'Severus, I well know that the price is high. Almost too high.' The ghost moved swiftly, crossing to stand directly in front of him, his dark eyes glittering with challenge. 'But think of what you can do. _You_, Severus. Not me, not Sirius, not Harry, not even Albus. You have been given the chance of a thousand lifetimes.'

'To be a hero? That was never my job,' Snape sneered, backing away.

'To save the woman you love,' James answered, mercilessly staring straight into his former enemy's eyes. 'Do you have _any _idea what I would give to be in your position? To have such power? To do for your Hermione what I could not for Lily?'

'Be careful what you wish for, Potter,' the other man warned, sudden exhaustion in every syllable. 'You have no inkling of what I dedicated my life to doing – and undoing.'

'If I could have bought Lily a single hour, I would have. None have been handed this opportunity. None have presented the right balance. None of them have been you.

'You said 'In full and in blood'. Did you mean it, Severus?'

'_In full and in blood.' 'Wishes come true, not free.'_ To say yes was to lose his compass, to irrevocably divorce himself from the only part of his life that had held any beauty. Knowing that he would never again run his hands through that hair, never receive that secretive, glowing look she used to toss at him over a crowded dinner table, never see her moving easily through his lab and library with the ease of one born to these places. She would never be at home in his presence. His student. Rufous-mane, heavy bag, a penchant for over-answering questions. Faithful servant to Potter's whims. One dimensional.

But living. And to say no...

'How does it work?'

James was startled by the gravelly voice. Snape had stood so still, his face oddly blank, that the other wizard hadn't been sure he was going to get an answer. 'I beg your pardon?' he asked reflexively.

'How does it work? When I agree to return, to make whatever changes must be made, how does it work? What keeps me from making the same mistakes the second time as the first?'

'We swallow time. Not memory.'

'So we will know. You will turn back the clock, but we will keep our memories of these last years?'

'Not 'we'. It is you who are the fulcrum, the crucial point of balance. You will retain your memories, so that they may guide you.'

Snape narrowed his eyes. 'Hermione does not keep hers?'

'No. For her, the last three years will be erased. They will never have been at all.'

'You would condemn me to _knowing _what I know about her, what we shared, and living with her indifference? Even her hatred?'

James spread his hands, and Snape could see the sincere remorse in the Gryffindor's eyes. 'These are not my terms. But they are the dictates I must give to you. Yes, you will retain all of your knowledge. You will _always _know that she loved you. But she will not. Cannot. She will return to being your student, and thinking of you as she has always done: with respect, nothing more.'

The desire to refuse surged so strongly he nearly let it off his tongue. This would be a torture for as long as he lived, even if it were only a few years. Knowing what he had lost. Seeing her daily in the halls of the castle – and knowing that she would never again be his. That her life would weave into another's, that she would walk away from him without a second glance or the glimmer of _'what if?'_

But if he could re-write the future to save everyone she loved and chose not to, she would never forgive him. She would not be Hermione if she did.

'How will I know what to do?' he asked quietly, his stillness surprising them both.

'It will be obvious. You will be dropped back into your life at the point of balance. You will know which path to pursue.'

In life there might have been tears, or a tightening of the chest, an abrupt inability to breathe. Here there was only a calm so intense he fancied he could hear the beat of a heart he no longer had. His eyes were bright with resolution as he met the glance of a man he had despised for the whole of his life.

'Take me back.'

**********

He expected to draw breath at any instant, deposited back into the world of the living wherever and whenever his forever-altering choice was to be made. But a span of seconds spun past, followed by minutes, and there was no movement. The ghost of James Potter had vanished, and the dark wizard stood alone in the shadow-copy of his mentor's study, waiting.

A bookcase rippled, and Hermione emerged from the wood and leather-bound volumes as if they had exhaled her into being.

Long, wild tresses, still honey-brown in death. Large cinnamon-and-chocolate eyes, blazing in adoration. A look reserved for him alone, one he would never see directed towards him again.

Now his chest tightened and his vocal cords refused to function. Strange, the things a spirit-body could do.

The look faded, worry quickly crowding it out. 'Severus-?'

'I have decided to go back,' he answered, forcing the words off his tongue. His voice sounded leaden with defeat, even to his own ears.

'Of course you have,' she said with a quiet, sad smile. 'That was inevitable, from the instant we saw Diagon Alley.' Her eyes searched his face, phantom fingertips coming to brush against his cheek gently. 'But you look like a man who has had his arm twisted, beloved. Is it so distasteful a task?'

He shook his head, averting his face to avoid her eyes. 'I had hoped to be finished with the world. It has not treated me well.'

The young woman could hear both truth and evasion in his voice, and ducked her head around the curtain of ghostly hair. Even in death, eyes remained windows to soul and mind. 'That is not the whole reason. What else has happened?'

His head snapped up, black eyes flashing. 'The future comes with a price-tag attached.'

'Too much?'

'Nearly.'

'What must be paid?' For a long moment, he did not answer her, insubstantial fingertips flexing around her equally transparent wrist. The dark gaze had gone empty, remote, the image of the man she had met as a child and feared for much of her school career. 'Severus...what is the price?'

His lips moved, the answer so quiet she scarcely credited her ears. 'Us.'

'Us?' she repeated dumbly. 'What does that-?'

'Whatever moment they select, it will be before the night I betrayed my true loyalties. We...we will walk entirely different roads. Ones that do not lead us to one another.'

Hermione was shaking her head violently, stepping away from him. 'No. That _is _too high. That's a price we cannot pay.'

'It is not yours to decide,' Lily Potter's voice echoed with regret as she and James shimmered into existence. 'Severus has made his choice.'

'How could you? Just...write it all away?' she whispered brokenly.

'Hermione...what would you say if I had refused? Sam and Helena. Cassandra and Ector. Gwyn and Aren. Julia and Gareth. Do they not deserve to live in a world where their lives are not destroyed – or ended! – merely by loving someone? With the power to change that, should I have refused?'

'Of course not!' she flung back at him. 'But surely...! We can wait,' she plunged on recklessly, hope flaring again. 'Until after the war, until after you do whatever it is that you must!'

Snape caught the tear-bright green eyes of the other woman and smiled in grim acknowledgement of what he saw there. 'I suspect I will not survive, either way.'

A tilt of the glorious red hair. 'I am truly sorry, Severus,' she answered hoarsely. 'Your life is forfeit. There is no timeline where you survive past the fall of Voldemort.'

'Karmically, that is no more than I deserve.' His voice was bleak as he drew Hermione to him, his hands melding with where her ribs should have been.

'And how am I supposed to survive?' Her face was stained with the silver of phantom-tears. 'How do I go back to living my life when I will be missing you with every breath? How am I supposed to go on, knowing what I've lost?'

'You will not,' he murmured gently. 'I, alone, will bear the burden of memory, to keep the cycle from repeating. You will be free. You'll never see this fork of time – with its attendant joys and pains. The only future you'll know is one of promise and prosperity.'

'And I will be denied remembering you. Everything about you...' With abrupt hostility, she whirled to glare at James. 'Change it. Cede this – that I might know him. Let me at least keep my memories.'

A shake of the messy head that looked so like that of his son. 'I have not that ability. We are not here to bargain under any circumstances. There are terms. They are ironclad. You meet them, or you do not, but they must be taken as they are.'

'And we must take them. You, who have defended half-giants, werewolves, hippogriffs, ex-convicts and house-elves, you above any other woman I have ever known, must understand that this is not a true choice. How can I choose you, you who have become my beacon of light in the darkest years of my black life, to remain in death with me when I might give you – and those like you – life?'

'When?' Hermione asked, quiet acceptance heavy in her voice, head bowed so that the disorderly strands of her brown hair rustled under his nose.

'Now,' Lily answered. 'There was time granted for you to be told, for you to bid one another farewell. That time has run out.'

'Not yet!' Hermione whispered frantically, meeting his eyes. 'Not yet – it's too soon. There hasn't been enough time! We can't go yet!'

'I will beat you to this side of the veil by more than a hundred years. I will wait for you. In death, I will find you,' Snape said, and his words had the quiet, weighted cadence of an irrevocable decree. 'And here, as time has no meaning, in death you may remember.'

'I won't forget. I promise,' she promised softly, the sheen of pearl thick on her face now. 'I won't forget. I won't forget. I won't-' He swallowed her mantra as he covered her mouth with his own for the last time.

**********

Heartbeat. Lungs drawing air. The roughness of a leather-bound book under his long hands. His tongue tasted faintly of salt...a gift of Hermione's tears.

A swift glance up from the tome lying in his lap revealed Spinner's End. Back to his childhood home. But this time, he felt anchored to the present, the integration of memory and body knitting into one whole. Not that he was a spirit using a body for a few minutes or even hours, but that he was rooted, now here to stay.

They had turned back the clock. But until when? Which part of the dance had he re-engaged?

A knock on the door. His eyes flew almost involuntarily to the cracked, ticking piece over the door. Shortly before midnight. A worm turned in his stomach. He could easily guess which night this was.

He opened the door a sliver, and was unsurprised when the robe-swathed figure threw back her hood to reveal the coldly beautiful features of Lucius' wife.

'Narcissa!' He greeted her with every evidence of pleasure, opening the door wider to admit Bellatrix as well. 'What a pleasant surprise!'

'Severus!' Her voice was taut, strained. 'May I speak to you? It's urgent.'

'But of course.' All courtesy, he allowed his guests to brush by him, acknowledging Bellatrix's sneered salutation with a mild one. Narcissa sank gracelessly into one of the threadbare armchairs, her sister taking up station behind her, the spy dropping into a fading velveteen across from them.

_Exactly as it happened before..._he noted whimsically.

'So, what can I do for you?'

'We...we are alone, aren't we?' Narcissa whispered, glacial eyes darting to the corners of the room.

'Yes, of course. Well, Wormtail's here, but we're not counting vermin, are we?' A flick of his wand and a bookshelf moved, revealing the plump Animagus standing in a narrow stairwell. 'As you have clearly realized, Wormtail, we have guests,' he continued smoothly. He turned back to the sisters. 'Wormtail will get us drinks, if you would like them.'

Wine was poured in ruby-red streams into ancient goblets inscribed with the Prince house crest. A sharp command sent the rodent-faced Death Eater scurrying back into his bedroom.

'The Dark Lord,' he toasted, and the sisters copied him.

'Severus, I'm sorry to come here like this, but I had to see you. I think you are the only one who can help me...I know I ought not to be here, I have been told to say nothing to anyone, but-'

'Then you ought to hold your tongue!' Bellatrix snarled, a claw-like hand tightening on her wine glass. 'Particularly in present company!'

Snape had never been able to resist bating the former beauty. Azkaban had left the eldest daughter of Orion Black extraordinarily volatile. 'Present company?' he drawled at his most sarcastic. 'And what am I to understand by that, Bellatrix?'

'That I don't trust you, Snape, as you very well know!' She unleashed a furious diatribe, firing out question after question – none of them new in the fifteen months since Voldemort had begun his reign. He had answered all of them – freely and under duress – and his skills had kept him alive through many questioners more artful than Bellatrix Lestrange.

'Now...you came to ask me for help, Narcissa?' he deflected calmly after answering the blistering attack.

'Yes, Severus. I – I think you are the only one who can help me, I have nowhere else to turn. Lucius is in jail, and...' Tears were creeping down her face, and Snape abruptly, painfully, recalled Hermione's face shining with grief, the peculiar dignity it leant her...

'The Dark Lord has forbidden me to speak of it. He wishes none to know of the plan. It is...very secret. But-'

'If he has forbidden it, you ought not to speak,' he interrupted with gentle firmness. 'The Dark Lord's word is law.'

'There!' Bellatrix announced in triumph. 'Even Snape says so: You were told not to talk, so hold your silence.'

'It so happens that I know of the plan,' he ignored the elder witch, rising with a faint frown. 'I am one of the few the Dark Lord has told. Nevertheless, had I not been in on the secret, Narcissa, you would have been guilty of great treachery to the Dark Lord.'

'I thought you must know about it!' the woman breathed in relief. 'He trusts you so, Severus...'

The pair disregarded Bellatrix's immediate, sputtering outrage. 'What help do you require, Narcissa? If you are imagining I can persuade the Dark Lord to change his mind, I am afraid there is no hope, none at all.'

'Severus...' she wept, pleading openly. 'My son...my only son...'

The cruelty of Draco Malfoy's features in a distant future, the sneering slant of his mouth as he had watched his professor and Head of House swing rotated in Snape's mind's eye, and he nearly snarled a refusal to the wretched woman begging before him. Save Draco. For what? So that his policies could cause the destruction of thousands of lives? Could ruin and then murder his father? He reflected brutally that Narcissa was lucky not to have lived to see the monster her son became.

Running through his head in a fine chain, whispering like sand in an hourglass, he could hear James Potter's voice._ 'You will know.'_

_Protect Draco...?_

Bellatrix had made some comment, Narcissa had snapped a response, and her ice-blue eyes were turned on the dark man beseechingly. 'That's why he's chosen Draco, isn't it? To punish Lucius?'

'If Draco succeeds,' Snape said softly, memory making his voice distant, 'he will be honoured above all others.'

'But he won't succeed!' The Potions master experienced a passionately violent wish that the sobbing woman before him was right. If only her son were as spineless as they had assumed! 'How can he? Severus...' she rose to stand in front of him, her fairy-pale hand clutching the front of his robes as if they were a raft in an endless sea. 'Please...you are, you have always been, Draco's favourite teacher. You are Lucius' old friend...I beg you...You are the Dark Lord's favourite, his most trusted advisor.' Her lips were trembling, with fear both for her son and her blasphemy. 'Will you speak to him, persuade him-?'

'The Dark Lord will not be persuaded,' he answered firmly, removing her tight fingers, 'and I am not stupid enough to attempt it. I cannot pretend that the Dark Lord is not angry with Lucius. Lucius was supposed to be in charge. He got himself captured, along with how many others, and failed to retrieve the prophecy in the bargain. The Dark Lord is angry, Narcissa, very angry indeed.'

A choking sob, the dry heave that meant a struggle for some semblance of self-control. 'Then I am right, he has chosen Draco in revenge! He does not mean him to succeed, he wants him to be killed trying!'

_That he may...he was _very _pleasantly surprised by Draco's performance. And mine carried a shock of its own – though of course, in the opposite way._

Her tears fell unchecked and unheeded now, dripping off her chin. The spy hesitated.

'_You will know.'_ He already knew the first ending of this story, and what his refusal would gain. Death and devastation. _And Hermione_. He ruthlessly suppressed the thought as soon as it entered his head. He had consigned her to memory – nothing more.

_I am the balance, the fulcrum of the war,_ he acknowledged in the grim privacy of his own head. _It was I who was given this choice and I who must see it done._

'It might be possible...for me to help Draco.'

'Severus – oh, Severus – you would help him? Would you look after him, see he comes to no harm?'

'I can try.'

She was on her knees in front of him, her bedraggled blond hair and tear-stained face rose from her grey-blue cloak like a drowning woman glimpsing light just above. 'If you are there to protect him...' she had seized one of his limp hands in both of hers, pressing her mouth to it frantically, 'Severus, will you swear it? Will you make the Unbreakable Vow?'

With terrible, binding certainty, Snape _knew_. The words teetering on the edge of his tongue were the pinpoint of history.

'The Unbreakable Vow?' he repeated, buying himself time. Once, he had refused her, and then strewn the floor with her blood and his own. Once, he had betrayed himself and in doing so, the Order.

Miles away, in a better part of London, Hermione Granger was lying stretched on her carpet in short shorts and a casual tank-top, quill tapping her nose as she fumed about his complicated essay...

'...the usual slithering out of action,' Bellatrix's sneering voice brought him back to his own, dark, living room. 'On the Dark Lord's orders, of course!'

_Save Draco...I have promised. I am committed. I did not return to watch her die._

'Certainly, Narcissa, I shall make the Unbreakable Vow. Perhaps your sister will consent to be our bonder.'

He kept himself from smirking as Bellatrix all-but gaped at him. He lowered himself to kneeling, facing the once-beautiful woman worn with grief and loss. He reached across to grasp her right hand in his own. 'You will need your wand, Bellatrix.'

Almost dazed, she did as ordered, shuffling forward a few steps to place the tip of her wand on their linked hands.

'Will you, Severus, watch over my son, Draco, as he attempts to fulfil the Dark Lord's wishes?' Gone was the weeping, willowy waif. There was steel in Narcissa's voice, and Snape felt the echo of it wash through him, chilling him as he answered.

'I will.' The first tongue of flame burst from the wand tip, looping around their fingers.

'And will you, to the best of your ability, protect him from harm?'

'I will.' A second thread issued, twining itself with the first in a fine, glowing chain.

'And, should it prove necessary...if it seems Draco will fail...will you carry out the deed that the Dark Lord has ordered Draco to perform?'

A pause. A moment to marshal his thoughts. He knew what was being asked, and what he might have to do. _Would_ have to do if the son of Lucius was to be truly saved.

'I will.' The third tongue blazed from her wand, twisting with the chain to become a dense, fiery rope. It was done. He had promised...and he would fulfil it or fail at the cost of his own life.

The magic soaked through their skin, binding them, linking them irrevocably. For as long as her son shouldered his burden, Snape, too, would feel its weight.

_Forgive me, Albus. You who have helped bring back what little light I once possessed...It will be unexpected. You will believe me your enemy, and your followers will spit on my name and call me traitor...but I have seen the future. Better for me to die a traitor to the cause I champion than a traitor to a world I loathe. And Hermione..._

A peculiar smile touched his face, equal parts ecstasy and agony as he drew Narcissa to her feet and sent the siblings on their way. His mind's eye was full of wild brown hair, two-toned eyes, full lips and a curious, alternately gentle and impassioned, voice. _I will remember. For the numbered days of my life, for the mornings I will rise uncertain in my course, for the nights of terror that I have ruined it yet again. _

_I will remember a season of sunlight, stolen from darkness. A world of acceptance raised from the ashes of betrayal. A life that I never deserved, but found a piece of, anyway._

_I will remember you._

_**********_

_A/N: End of story! Please let me know what you think!_


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